[sourdough]

I'm a little late to this conversation, and yes, mine is direct wired to the battery with an inline fuse. The thing that killed mine was the rubber grommet at the top leaked water, and we had a lot of rain. It filled a little tray directly under the grommet that housed the circuit board...it fried. It was an LCI. Also, the nut for manual operation twisted right off when I tried to turn it; looked like it was made out of pewter. Asked the SM about it and he said that was a common problem with the LCI jacks. Replaced it with a 5k lb. Stromberg Carlson (whoever knew they made jacks) and it has worked fine for a little over a year but IT IS SOOOOOO slow. Good luck on getting it fixed vs replacing.