Posts: 2687
Location: Hayward, WI | Reef hawg, I read over my post and it wasn't very clear. Yes I do have a 24 volt motor. I should have said that I hook up my trolling motor to both batteries (pos to pos of batt 1 and neg to neg of batt 2, with jumper to remaining pos and neg terminals). Then, I hook up the outboard, accesories, and bowmount depthfinder to one battery, and my rear mounted depthfinder to the other battery. My reasoning for this is that my motor will charge the battery after it gets run down from running a bilge pump, livewell, boat lights, etc. This should keep the two batteries close to the same charge. Since the Vexilar doesn't take too much power to run, it's pretty close. Also, by having the rear mounted depthfinder on a different battery than the outboard I can reduce possible interference while I'm running as well.
Over on walleyecentral.com a lot of the guys made it sound like this was a bad idea because you "could" have uneven discharge of the batteries. Also, if the trolling motor runs your batteries down, you will have no starting battery.
I have a 65# Maxxum, on a boat that probably doesn't make 700 pounds. I can run FOREVER on a charge, so running the batteries down isn't an issue. I also have a 40 tiller, and can pull start it if I need to, so dead batteries won't leave me stranded. As far as unequal battery discharge goes, doesn't really seem to be a problem.
I have a 16' Sea Nymph BT, and finding room for three batteries would be a challenge, not to mention I don't need the extra weight either. This system works well for me! Hope this explains things a little better!
curleytail
Edited by curleytail 10/11/2006 1:58 PM
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