jayhanig
Master Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2010
- Messages
- 836
My boat sits out in the driveway under a cover most of the year. I keep the battery healthy by keeping it on a Schumacher 1.5 amp battery maintainer any time it's not actually in the water.
I got many years of use out of last year's battery using this procedure until it finally died last December. So I went to my local autoparts store and bought a Durolast 24MS-DL marine starting battery. It was reliable until one day a couple of weeks ago when I went downstairs and instead of seeing the normal green LED on the maintainer, I had a bright red. Bummer. I thought it was more likely that the maintainer had taken a dump so I swapped it out with another maintainer of the same design that I was using on my motorcycle.
Now the boat maintainer worked perfectly on the motorcycle battery and the motorcycle battery maintainer started doing the same thing the first one had done on the boat. So it was a boat issue, not a maintainer issue.
I would plug it into the boat's battery and it would charge forever most of the time but I'd never get the green LED. I'd either get the red or no LED at all.
To cut to the chase, I took the boat battery back to where I got it and they tested it and said it was bad. Luckily the warranty covered a new one.
I brought the new one home and threw it on my big charger/starter until I got the green LED indicating a full charge (about 5 hours). Then I took it out to the boat this evening and installed it. The last thing I did was hook up the battery maintainer to it.
Bummer. Yellow charging LED along with the red glow. What are the chances that two of these batteries would be duds?
I will go back to the dealer tomorrow and get the 2nd battery checked. If it tests bad, then I will insist they test the third before I leave. I should have done that earlier today but it never occurred to me the new one would be a dud.
I got many years of use out of last year's battery using this procedure until it finally died last December. So I went to my local autoparts store and bought a Durolast 24MS-DL marine starting battery. It was reliable until one day a couple of weeks ago when I went downstairs and instead of seeing the normal green LED on the maintainer, I had a bright red. Bummer. I thought it was more likely that the maintainer had taken a dump so I swapped it out with another maintainer of the same design that I was using on my motorcycle.
Now the boat maintainer worked perfectly on the motorcycle battery and the motorcycle battery maintainer started doing the same thing the first one had done on the boat. So it was a boat issue, not a maintainer issue.
I would plug it into the boat's battery and it would charge forever most of the time but I'd never get the green LED. I'd either get the red or no LED at all.
To cut to the chase, I took the boat battery back to where I got it and they tested it and said it was bad. Luckily the warranty covered a new one.
I brought the new one home and threw it on my big charger/starter until I got the green LED indicating a full charge (about 5 hours). Then I took it out to the boat this evening and installed it. The last thing I did was hook up the battery maintainer to it.
Bummer. Yellow charging LED along with the red glow. What are the chances that two of these batteries would be duds?
I will go back to the dealer tomorrow and get the 2nd battery checked. If it tests bad, then I will insist they test the third before I leave. I should have done that earlier today but it never occurred to me the new one would be a dud.
