On board charger question

[wingman47]

I just bought a 1994 Crestliner. It has a 24 volt trolling motor with a on board charger. It appears to charge the two 12 volt batteries and the starting battery. One battery on the trolling motor keeps going dead. It is a new battery. Does any one have a diagram of how this system should be hooked up? It has two large red wires going to the trolling motor from the positive.

 

[j_martin]

Re: On board charger question

Normally, an on board charger has isolated battery chargers, so each one is hooked up to a separate battery and charges it independently of the others no matter how it's hooked up.

One caveat. If you have unmatched batteries in your trolling system, and a "run or charge" switch on said system, when the switch is in "charge" or maybe "12", the batteries are wired in parallel. One battery may prevent the other from taking a charge because of unmatched characteristics. Characteristics of a battery change considerably as they age.

So, make sure the "run-charge" switch is in the run position, and measure the voltage across each battery as it's charging. If there's a dead bank on the charger it'll show up as low voltage.

hope it helps
John

 

[Silvertip]

Re: On board charger question

The key here is that you say one output is for the starting battery and one for the troller battery. YOu have TWO troller batteries. Feeding one of them in a 24 volt system does not charge the other one. But let's have the rest of the story. Does the boat have a 12/24/Run/Charge switch on the panel at the bow? Details, details, details.

 

[Barnacle_Bill]

Re: On board charger question

Also keep in mind that just because the batteries are new doesn't mean one couldn't be bad.

 

[wingman47]

Re: On board charger question

No 12/24/Run/Charge switch on the boat.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: On board charger question

So one battery is not being charged because the charger is not connected to it??????? How is this thing wired????? Help us help you!

 

[j_martin]

Re: On board charger question

Sometimes 2 bank chargers are wired just to the trolling batteries, assuming the engine will keep up the starting battery.

That's the way mine came.

I added a 1.5 amp maintainer for the main battery because it's usually down a little at the end of the day from running live wells after pulling the boat, backing up the GPS, using lights after dark, etc.