Melted Trolling motor plug

[bobothewizard]

I melted my trolling motor plug today on my 71 thrust motorguide while out on the lake and I was wondering if any of you guys could share some insight on why?

I have the big female to male plug and while out on the lake today the male part of the plug started smoking and basically melted. Im a little curious why the breaker in the back of the boat didnt trip and the wires in the back connected to the batteries were not even warm.

Now the weird part is, I got home and took the prop off to check to see if i had any fishing line or stuff around the prop shaft and I did not, but after running the motor without the prop for about 2 minutes the shaft where the prop screws on got fairly hot almost to hot to touch. Im wondering if maybe the lower unit itself is going bad? Or is this normal when the trolling motor is out of water and running? Maybe the shaft itself is water cooled?


Anyway, im on my way to pick up another plug tomorrow but im wondering if there isnt something wrong with the motor itself?

What do you guys think?



---- After doing a little more investigating on the forums here its a 4 prong twist lock plug. I wonder if i didnt twist lock it down, since i havent checked it in a long time it might have wiggled loose? Would that maybe have it melt?

Thanks in advance!

 

[HONKER1]

Re: Melted Trolling motor plug

The shaft of the motor will get hot if you run it out of water. The head is normally surrounded with a unlimited supply of cool water to keep it from overheating.

 

[Splat]

Re: Melted Trolling motor plug

Assuming your using a real trolling motor plug, and have proper 6ga wire on both sides of it, a few things come to mind.

First off is dirty connections, dirty contacts will cause high resistance, and resistance it transformes into heat. A 70 trolling motor will draw somewhere around 70 amps under load, this is not insignificant on its own, add some high resistance and you could generate enough heat to cause a problem.

Secondly is the plug could have wiggled loose. Imagine it like this, you have two big contacts on top of each other making good contact. As they begin to slide apart the surface area lessens, this would be the same in using a smaller gauge wire. The less surface area of the contacts, the hotter the connection will get, and could create a problem with the plug.

Lastly your circuit breaker could be faulty, to big and didn't break the circuit in the even the motor was drawing heavy curent. You would need to confirm that with a amp meter tho.

Bill

 

[bobothewizard]

Re: Melted Trolling motor plug

I wanted to get back and reply to this thread. Thank you all for replying. I ended up replacing the plug on the front console and it seems to be working great for now.


Thanks again for the replies.