Minn Kota Powerdrive Problems

[TWO BARRELS]

I have a Minn Kota 50PD that is about 4 years old. I used it on Saturday and everything worked great. Later in the day on Sunday, it began to act up. First, the motor would not run. When this happended, I could hear a buzzing sound coming from the area of the control board that is inside the mount. A few minutes later, the steering also quit working. After I got back to the house (everything had a chance to cool down on the ride back home), I decided to check things out. I connected the power and the foot control. Switched the motor on with the continuous switch and ran the speed control through its range a couple of times. The motor operated as it was designed to. I tried the same sequence using the momentary pedal with good results. After I had run the motor for a total of about 25 seconds, it quit working and I could hear the same noise I heard on the lake.<br /><br />I am inclined to think that once the control board heats up from use, one of its many parts fails. I spoke with Minn Kota and a new board costs $116.00 plus shipping.<br /><br />What do the Minn Kota experts think? Could there be some other problem besides a control board failure?<br /><br />How much trouble is involved in replacing such a control board?<br /><br />Thanks for your help and your patience with the long winded post.<br /><br />Scott

 

[richg99]

Re: Minn Kota Powerdrive Problems

I happened to have my Minn-Kota PowerDrive FOOT control board apart just the other day. <br /><br />It is no big deal to pull the cover off of the foot control to get access to the board. The board appeared to be completely sealed. It did, however, have "switches" buried inside of the sealed plastic flexible covering. <br /><br />I had to test each switch while looking for the ones that control direction, as I was switching the bow mount to a stern mount. I had to cut a few wires to find that the yellow and green wires control direction. Reversing those wires reversed the motor's direction.<br /><br />If your TM was mine, I'd pull the motor-area control apart to try to isolate the sounds that you are hearing. My bet is that the motor-area control is made up of a couple of relays that move power from the battery to the actual trolling motor itself, and the gears of the drive motor that push and pull the shaft in a right or left direction. <br /><br />The foot control board is only a few switches and a slide-control resistor. The motor-area control is probably only relays and the directional motor itself, along with some gearing to drive the shaft. You might have a worn or broken gear that is locking up, and blowing a circuit breaker when it overheats. It might just need a plastic gear to fix. It would be a real shame to buy a new board, and then find out that a plastic gear was the real problem all along. You might have a replacable relay that is causing the trouble.<br /><br />Once you isolate what the sound is; where exactly it is coming from; and what swtich/pressure etc. is starting and stopping it you can consider replacing the offending item with a replacement or an external relay, gear or whatever. At this point, what can you lose? <br /><br />You could certainly bypass the remote steering and use the TM as a hand controlled unit if that was your only recourse. <br /><br />I'd bet you can isolate the problem down to one relay or gear and just replace it. You have very little to lose by taking it apart and being careful to replace the various parts exactly the same way they came out. You would probably have to do this, even if you buy that $115.00 new board.<br /><br />Of course, I'm a "tinkerer" and would take anything apart. Some of them, I can actually put back together again. <br /><br />regards, RichG