2006 60hp mercury bigfoot, showing around 10 amps on guage

[Seasonally.boating.jon]

I have a 2006 Suntracker with a 60hp mercury bigfoot. Was going to take the boat out and upon checking everything before departure, I found the battery was dead. I charged it. We got to the river and it started "OK". Before we got too far away from the dock I noticed the gauge was showing only 10 amps if that. So I ran it for a short period of time thinking that maybe it will go ahead and charge up but it didn't. Before I go ahead and spend $150 on a new battery, I wanted to run my issue by you guys first. Thanks.

 

[Texasmark]

Re: 2006 60hp mercury bigfoot, showing around 10 amps on guage

$150 for a battery? around here $65 will buy a nice one from WW or AZ. Have the battery load checked where you plan to buy your new one. Load check is where you take a fully charged battery to the store and they hook up a carbon pile to it and run the current up to 100-200 amperes.....requirements to start engines. They monitor the voltage across the battery at that amperage. If less than 11 volts the battery is toast.....too much internal resistance. If it holds 11v at 150 roughly amperes, you have something bleeding off your charge.

10 amperes from the charger depends on the alternator on your engine, engine rpms, active load at the time of charging besides the load to charge the battery, battery discharge state and all. Not all that bad a charge rate.

Mark

 

[Seasonally.boating.jon]

Re: 2006 60hp mercury bigfoot, showing around 10 amps on guage

Mark, thanks for the information. And I screwed up, what I meant to say was "volts "Instead of amps.

I bought a battery for my truck here the other day and the best buy I found was $63 from RK. I haven't checked around for a marine battery yet. I don't expect a super deal or anything.

 

[Texasmark]

Re: 2006 60hp mercury bigfoot, showing around 10 amps on guage

The Merc manual specifies the different charges by amperage, like 9 amp or 14 amp or 16 amp. On checking performance, for a given unit, they tell you the acceptable max. reading.

For 3 cylinder engine stators, the manual lists a black/red stator at 9 amps rating, black at 14 and 16 and red at 16.

9 ampere output stator current max is 6 at 2k, 9 at 3k and 10 at 4k and 5k on the manual start engine.

14 is 4 at idle, 11 at 2k, 14 at 4k and above

16 is 5 at idle, 16 at 2k, 18 at 4k and above

So, as one would expect, output current is a max available and rpm dependent. Also, the battery charge level determines the actual amperage which tapers off as the battery charges regardless of rpms and manual start engines use the smaller alternator as they don't have to recharge a starting battery.

Mark