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| My trolling motor does not seem to have the guts it used to. You really notice it on a windy day and if it's blowing more than 15mph it won't keep up. The only changes I have made besides a battery is moving the battery to the back of the boat. It had 8 guage wire and I ran the rest in 10 guage which is all I could find. It's about 25 feet of wire. I did this a couple years ago. The battery checks out fine. Tonight I rewired it with 4 guage wire front to back. Anybody have any thoughts on this? |
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| Hi Todd- My first guess is that you've probably solved the problem. I just calculated the voltage drop of #10 wire for a 25 ft circuit with a 50 amp load(Large trolling motor@ full power)at about 3.25 volts. That means your troller is only getting 9.45V when the battery is fully charged at 12.7V and that ~163 watts of power was being lost in the wiring.. The #4 gauge wire should definitely solve any voltage drop problem (to much wire resistance). The #4 calculates to .8V drop at 50A load and about 40 watts of power loss in the new wiring. If that has'nt solved it, then it's the battery or the trolling motor itself.
When you say the battery checks out fine. What does that mean? How did you test it? The standard marine starting battery cold cranking test or car starting battery cold cranking test will not show a loss of capacity on a trolling motor type battery.
The November Muskies Inc issue will have an article on this subject (Batteries, etc).
[:bigsmile:]
It's your choice to Catch'em & Let'em Go!
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| Esox Maniac, I used a tester that tests the electrolite. I also hooked up my portable trolling motor to it and tested it and compared it to other batteries and it was the same. I pray it's not my motor mainly because it's a pinpoint and will take time to get it fixed. One thing my dad was doing with it for awhile is that he wanted to keep it in the water when we troll usually around 2-4mph. The electric was not running but has the transducers in the head of the motor. He curses my dash mount which is an eagle ultra classic. It's ok but does not compare to the pinpoint. I hope that did not damage it. |
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| Esox Maniac it was the wiring. Had it out today and it was like going from 5 to 9 on the dial. Huge difference. Thanks for helping.[:)] |
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