Battery & troller problems

[gwood]

Hi boating world, another newbie here,
I became a proud father to a 07 Tracker 190 boat about 6 months ago and tried to upgrade the power supply for the troller motor to provide increased time on the lakes.
The boat had a cranking battery for the Mercury 90 and 1 deep cycle battery for the troller & I assume everything else, so I added a 2nd deep cycle battery and wired in parallel to the other hoping this would do the trick. Unfortunately the troller now has an power intermittence problem whereby the power cuts in and out on the troller, first I thought it may have been the foot pedal switch as when I placed the troller on constant speed the problem went away, or so I thought. But recently the constant speed selection does not solve the problem and in fact the motor guide 45# safety stop activates causing a break in the circuit. I am not an expert in electrical artistry by any stretch of the imagination and hope someone can point me in the right direction for my wiring errors or if I am getting power surges or drops causing the troller to be intermittent and to pop the safety switch.

 

[John_S]

Re: Battery & troller problems

I don't like parrellel batteries, but don't think that is the problem. Sounds like you have a auto-resting circuit breaker. Is this only happening at the higher settings? Remove the older of the two batteries and see if it still happens. Then need to find the CB and its rating and what size wire tracker used.

 

[gwood]

Re: Battery & troller problems

I don't like parrellel batteries, but don't think that is the problem. Sounds like you have a auto-resting circuit breaker. Is this only happening at the higher settings? Remove the older of the two batteries and see if it still happens. Then need to find the CB and its rating and what size wire tracker used.

It is happening across all settings. I only put the 2nd battery in about 6 weeks ago and it correlates with my problem starting. Isn't the CB the safety stop which is rated for 40A or is there another CB I should be looking for? The wire but it is about 6 or 8awg, but I will have to check to be absolutely certain.
Is there an alternative wiring method that is more appropriate and how would I go about wiring it together with charger (charger is only designed for dual 12V batteries.

 

[John_S]

Re: Battery & troller problems

I assume your trolling motor is 12V only, but you need two batteries to get through a whole day. Consider wiring them on a switch such that you can control which one is being used. In emergencys, you could also sellect "both", which is both in parrellel.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Battery & troller problems

Whether you have one battery or fifteen batteries in parallel should have no bearing whatsoever on the circuit breaker. The motor draws a given amount of current maximum regardless of the number of batteries. So you either have a wiring problem or a motor problem and yes -- while it may seem coincidental that the problem was due to addition of the battery, it could still be a motor issue. Remove the prop from the motor and check for fish line wrapped tightly around the shaft. Next, with the prop installed, manually turn the propeller. The propeller will have a slight jerkiness feel as you rotate it but it should rotate fairly freely. If it appears to be binding, then you've isolated the problem to tight bearings in the motor causing very high current flow. If you wired the batteries pos-to-pos, and neg-to-neg then wiring is correct. The circuit breaker should be installed on the positive post of the battery to which the motor is connected. Each pair of outputs on your two bank charger can connect to either battery (observing polarity of course).

 

[gwood]

Re: Battery & troller problems

The wiring is correct based upon your description and I will evaluate the motor for excessive binding. On the charger, am I to attach 1 output to each deep cycle battery? to do this I would have to remove the charger wire that is currently connected to the main motor cranking battery and have it charge from the alternator only, is this correct?