Dead Battery With Maintainer.

[cvtech1]

I have a two bank charger on my 2006 Palm Beach with 90Hp Yamaha boat that I recently purchased about 3 months ago. I have not taken it out in about two months and today I went to crank it and it was dead. Now I did leave the ACC and NAV switches on but the key was off. My question is will the Maintainer now that everything is off charge my batteries back up? It was a dumb mistake on my part but will the batteries come back to life? One battery is for the engine and one for the trolling motor. Any advice will be helpful, thanks.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

no, your maintainer is to only maintain the boat batteries. these are generally a fraction of an amp. put a good charger on them for about 12 hours and get a charge into the batteries.

 

[foxden]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

I just went through a similar issue with batteries that were not holding a charge. The advice to put them on a charger is correct, you will soon find out. Some batteries, especially starting batteries, once drained fully never recover. Just like your car battery they start things up and are immediately recharged from the running engine. Trolling batteries, on the other hand, are designed to drain and recharge usually will come back.

Good luck. Using the maintainer all the time is essential to keeping the batteries topped off and will greatly increase their life.

 

[KD4UPL]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

Just to give you some perspective: I'll assume you have group 27 batteries which are 100 Ah approximately. 2 of them makes 200 Ah. If you killed them flat, which it sounds like you need to put 200 Ah back in. I'll guess you might have a 1 amp battery maintainer. If that's the case it would take OVER 200 hours to put that much back in. That's at least 9 or 10 days.
In reality, it will never really charge them well. You need to put much higher amperage into the batteries at this point.

 

[UncleWillie]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

If the Batteries have been at near zero volts for 2 months it is unlikely that they will recover.
Charge them up fully and then disconnect the charger and come back in 24 hours.
If the voltage drops below 12.4 volts the batteries should not be relied upon to operate when you need them most.

 

[cvtech1]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

Thanks all, I forgot to mention that the fully charged light on the maintainer is illuminated. I have not check the trolling battery to see if it is drained yet. We had three nights here in Texas of below 30 degrees, not sure if that did it or was it the NAV and ACC switches being left on? I have a Schumacher large charger that I definitely will be using!

Thanks UncleWillie for that info about checking Batteries after charge! Very helpful.

 

[colbyt]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

If your charger is one of the auto types you may have to switch it to manual for an hour or so to get some juice in there so the auto part can work. I do agree if they have been dead for for a month the odds are very heavy against you saving them.

 

[cvtech1]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

Thanks, will do!

 

[jkust]

Re: Dead Battery With Maintainer.

Are the batteries from 2006? Is it safe to assume they didn't freeze in Texas? Marine batteries seem to take a lot of abuse and still keep working given their robust build. I let my 200 dollar battery freeze in my boat like an idiot last winter since I forgot to turn the battery switch off and the anti theft led on the radio killed it. Amazingly,,, after a full winter and having froze and bowed out the sides it still charged up just fine. The problem then became, will it give out on me on the water when I would have wished I replaced it. I bit the bullet and replaced it for piece of mind. Where boating is concerned I'm way more apt to replace something then wait it out. Of course having a battery freeze solid to the point of bowing out the case is different than just having them run down completely.