When to charge cranking battery?

[koolerb]

Re: When to charge cranking battery?

If you frequent open water, the ocean or the Great Lakes get a second battery. If you're on smaller safer water most of the time, it would be safe to keep doing what your doing with one exception. At the end of each day hook up a charger and bring it back to 100%. Leaving the battery in a partially discharged condition will reduce capacity over time and significantly shorten battery life.

 

[h2ohzrd]

Re: When to charge cranking battery?

Interesting discussion. I too want to run my sonar/GPS off the cranking batt (for a 40hp), but the lake i fish only allows me to use my 10 hp kicker. I figured it would be Ok to use the starting batt for simple electronics since the draw is low.

 

[donnenluja]

Re: When to charge cranking battery?

NeWcS<br />Just a thought. Doesn't your Merc outboard have a starting procedure with a pull rope in the event your battery is dead? My Yamaha does. You just pop the top cover and pull off the top bracket and wrap rope around and pull like an old lawnmower. Check out your owner's manual and see. <br />As far as batteries go, I believe all is right with using a marine deep cycle battery for all of your operations if you want to go with just one battery. Otherwise, like many are saying, it is a good idea to have one battery just for cranking the motor and the marine deep cycle for running your toys. Personally I have run all day with my trolling motor and humminbird and still am able to start my Yamaha 90HP at the end of the day with my marine deep cycle alone.(but I keep an extra battery, just in case. must be the boy scout in me)

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: When to charge cranking battery?

I've left my sonar and VHF radio on overnight, with it pulling from a tiny cranking battery only maintained by a 28hp outboard and it turned that engine over with as much umph the next morning as it had 24 hours earlier.<br /><br />They don't drain much. You'd burn more juice starting your big engine to charge the battery than just leaving it off entirely.