shorted out?

[bredd1]

my boat has a switch where where you for the trolling motor. you have 2 options. run it on run like you are supposed to or on charge. me being the dummy i am, i ran it on charge one day. now it will only run on charge but with half the horse power. does anyone know what happened and how to fix it?as you can tell im not an electrician.

 

[dchris]

Re: shorted out?

You might need to describe this a little more. I assume both switch positions worked previously? Is this a dual battery setup? I would expect the charge position to run on both batteries and the other position to be a single battery(assuming dual batteries). Do you have 12v or 24v system? Any chance of putting a meter on it?

 

[bredd1]

Re: shorted out?

it is a dual battery set up. a trolling motor battery and the engine battery. when ran on run like you are supposed to, the trolling motor uses the trolling motor battery and 24v. when run on charge, which apparently, i didn't know, you are not supposed to, the trolling motor uses the engine battery and 12v. i ran it on charge one day and i guess shorted?? something and now it with only run on charge and not on run. ??

 

[dchris]

Re: shorted out?

There are a lot of posts that show dual battery switching on here. I am not sure you can run a mixed voltage system. Maybe someone else can chime in on that. So when you switch from charge to run is that switching 24/12v mode? If that is the case you could have over powered your trolling motor. I would expect a dual voltage system to have some over voltage protection features. The best way to help get to the bottom of this is getting a cheap volt meter and taking some measurements. There are some basic meters out there in the 20/30 dollar range.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: shorted out?

First of all we need to know what motor you have and whether it's a 12 volt motor or a 24 volt motor, or a 12 AND 24 volt motor. If it is a 12 AND 24 volt motor there will be switch somewhere on the motor foot control. The other test would be to look at the cable between the motor and foot control. If there are three wires (black, orange, and red) you have a 12 AND 24 volt motor. If you have only two wires (Black and Red) you have EITHER a 12 volt motor or a 24 volt motor (can't run on both voltages). Now if you THINK you have a 24 volt motor and are using the engine battery as one of the two batteries you need for 24 volts, you are making a big mistake. 24 volt motors need two SEPARATE batteries wired in series -- not parallel for 24 volt operation. Using your start battery for one of them is certainly possibly but not recommended. Let us know exactly what you have. I can tell you this however, in a true 24 volt system, that switch you mention is used to BREAK the series connection between the two batteries and it parallels them so you can charge the trolling motor batteries through the motor plug. In the RUN position, the motor gets 24 volts.

 

[bredd1]

Re: shorted out?

i have a 24volt. and thats where i went wrong i think. from what i understand when i put the switch on charge instead of run it uses the starting battery. i made the mistake of doing that one day and now it will not work on run at all. it will still work on charge but goes alot slower.

 

[dchris]

Re: shorted out?

Thanks ST, that makes a lot of sense. You might have a battery problem with one of your two batteries. You need to check if you are getting 24v in run position. 1/2 power in charge position would be expected, that would be the 12v parallel connection.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: shorted out?

You need to rethink the wiring for your trolling motor. That motor requires two deep cycle batteries wired in series, not parallel and one of them SHOULD NOT be the starting battery. As for the switch problem, I don't have a clue what to tell you siince I can't see the wiring. But the place to start would be to check all connections beginning at the batteries and working forward. Checking means to disconnect, clean, and tighten securely.