Ben

Didn't take the time to do the math but with one 15 watt panel producing 750 watts per week, it will probably take a half dozen or more of those panels to charge one battery in a day, and that's with the battery only at approx 50% disharge. Since he will be probably be fishing during the day, he would have to have two sets of batteries, one charging while use one, then he's gotta hope it doesn't get cloudy. They make it look good by their charts but you gotta think about is when you look at the fact to replace 50 amps in a 100Ah battery, that's over 600 watts, almost what one panel it rated to put out in a week. To get that down to a day, that's about seven panals, providing it's sunny every day. Like I said though, this is all shooting from the hip, didn't do the math but I think I'm somewhat close.

When you find some, let me know, I've been looking for the same thing. My Javelin has it at the tip of the front deck, back by the motor and a couple of other places and I want to replace it. Tried a couple of truck shops and thought about using a mud flap but can't find any the has a pattern I would use.

A couple of companies, Stay-N-Charge is one I think, that will charge them from the vehicle but once there, who wants for run a vehicle the lenght of time it takes to charge TM batteries, same with an Inverter that will provide and AC output from the vehicle battery, vehicle will need to be run to keep it from killing the vehicle's battery. Haven't seen any of the solar units that have the amperage to charge one, seen several maintainers but it takes a lot more current to charge the battery. Boils down to, better find you one of those small Honda generators (they run very quitely) that will deliver at least 500 continuous watt's and take it along. If I was gonna get one of those, I would go ahead and get at least a 1000 watt, so you can use it around the house to power a small power tool if needed. The 3 - 4 amps a 500 watt unit will put out ain't gonna power much more than your charger or a small drill.

Plugging the charger in first, then the cord would work just fine. Maintaining water level and using distilled water is extremely important. On the post above, must have been one dumb dealer and you were smart to ignore him and install a bank for the cranking battery, there have been numbers of studies done on tourament pro's and other bass boats showing the cranking battery is usually down to about 80% charge at the end of the day unless they made long run back to the ramp. Plus the fact that it's just as important to keep the charger connected when the boat is not in use to keep the batteries at full charge. A lot of people are too used to the old, cheap automatic charges that fries a battery if left connected and they have a hard time with leaving a good charger on all the time, but that is the best for the battery. Deep cycle batteries do ok as cranking batteries on smaller motors but can cause you problems on the bigger, Direct Injected V-6 motors, they may not deliver the cranking amps needed. The 200/225 Fichts are very demanding when it comes to cranking one of those. For those, you need to run a big, dual purpose battery. I would question the condition of my batteries or cable connections if my battery charge indicator (BCI) was dropping that much while running the TM. Even on max, the battery should drop very little if everything is good. I run a Curtis, 24V digital BCI mounted at the front deck on my batteries that constanlty monitors the level of charge an it never drops when the motor is running and goes back up when not. Once a battery gets near the end of it's life cycle or has become heavily sulphated, they will do that because they can't deliver the amp demand.

Spent many years alone in a 17' canoe so let me give you a few hints on how to make it more fishable. First, if you're by yourself, don't sit in the back seat, sit in the front seat and sit facing the rear of the boat, this places your weight closer to the center. Next add some weight to the rear, I used to throw my spare tire in mine but with them hid in these new vehicles thats not real pratical, since I reload my shotgun shells, I find three 25 pound bags of shot works great. The wind is still going to push you but it won't spin you around in circles like it does if your sitting in the rear. Need to add something, when I said add weight to the rear, that was when you were in the front sitting and facing the rear. You don't want to be adding weight to the rear is sitting in the rear. Canoes do much better when they are sitting level in the water.

Just about all good chargers are going to do this, except those cheap home chargers that just have auto shuf off.. Matter of fact, it's recommended you do that every so often to equalize batteries. The charger will hold in the absorption mode for a preset time before cutting off. Equalizing the battery is done by extending the length of time the charger stays in the absorption mode. Commercial chargers have a button you can press but the only way to do it on the On Boards is to unplug them and then plug them back in again.

When connecting the charger to the batteries, connect the negative and positive leads of the charger to their respective battery. It's very common to get a small arc when you first connect the charger. My Pro Mariners always make a small arc when I first connect them. As long as the same set of negative and positive charger leads are connected to the same, how the batteries are tied together makes no difference to the charger. You can have 10 batteries connected together in series (120 volts) and still charge each battery with a 12 volt charger, without disconnecting any of them.

Hopefully there's no fuel vapors in the compartment, if so you need to fix that, but you have nothing to worry about mounting the charger in there. The charger is fully sealed and once the cables are connected to the batteries you leave them connected so there's no chance of a spark. The only time it would have any chance of making an arc is when plugging and unplugging the AC. Get one of those AC connectors with a cover that mounts in the gunwall somewhere so you don't have to raise the cover to get to the charger cord and then theres nothing in there that can cause an arc. You just don't want to get it into too tight of an area that it can't get air circulation around the charger case and make it get too hot.

Batteries of the same type mean both be flooded lead acid batteries like you have, or both be AGM, etc. However, that much difference in size and it might cause the charger to have problems. That charger is designed to transfer charge current to the weaker battery as one battery reaches full charge and it may try to bounce back and fourth with batteries that much difference. You could call the tech support about that one. Now, with that said, why are you running two different size batteries???? That's only damaging the batteries. The smaller battery can not begin to maintain the charge level of the bigger battery so the bigger battery is doing all the work. Two batteries connected together, series or parallel, should be identical in all aspects for best service, even the same age. Anytime you replace TM batteries, replace the pair.

My concern would be that size boat in a dual console. See how well your 7' rods will fit in the rod lockers without jamming and having the tip hang on the wires and stuff in the bow. I went from a single to a dual console because my dad is 76 and wanted something for him to sit behind. My boat is a 20' and it still has problems handling my 7' rods without the tip getting into the wiring etc in the tip of the bow, even with the rod storage tubes in the port box. As for price, that just depends on how bad you want the boat. If you're not dead set on "THAT" boat, you can probably negotiate it down a $K or so.

Clean it up, clean the carbs and fuel system out, might need a fuel pump kit (depends on how long it has set), replace the water pump impeller, change the LU oil and you have a very nice boat. Thats almost identical to the one I have, mine is the MV-3 instead of the Marsh Hawk. The boat in aveage condition and running is worth about $2,500. I would pull the bottom plug on the LU and let a small amount drain out just to make sure it's black and no water. The LU for that motor is hard to come by.

Know nothing about the boat, know something about the motor. Motor is basically a pretty good motor but have it checked out by a competent mechanic. Like anything else, if it's used up, and needs rebuilt, that's about $3,000. As with any boat that age, check the transom and floors for rot. Look at the bolts holding the motor on inside the transome and see how far they buried into it, very much and that's a good sign of a soft transome, then take a couple of 3/4" wrenches and make sure they are good and tight and don't tighten deeper into it. Step all around on the floor and decks, make sure there are no weak spots.

I think what you are describing is your receptical is made for a 12/24 motor connection. A 12/24 motor uses three wires and the red/black is the third connection in the receptical. Normally they use red, black and orange but your's could be using a red/black in the place of orange, color doesn't matter to electrons. For your use on a straight 24V motor you only need to hook up the two that match the plug's connections. On the battery, your red/positive lead will go on the positive of one battery, that jumper will go on the negative of that same battery and to the positive of the second battery. Your TM black/negative will go on the negative of the second battery. This will provide a straight 24 volts to the TM. You will still hook your onboard charger (if you have one) to each of the batteries the same as if they were two seperate batteries. I would recommend using crimp on connectors large enough to fit the wire you're going to use and then use a benzomatic tourch to solder the connections with resin core after crimping, then tape them well or use two layers of heatshrink on them.

Unless things have changed, Pro Mariner builds the XPS chargers, they just don't have a couple of the features the PM charges have, but they do have the main selling point of all PM chargers. They will transfer the amperage to the weaker battery as they reach full charge. In other words a three bank 6 amp per bank charger charging the cranking and two TM batteries will start charging the TM batteries at 9 amps each as soon as the cranking battery is fully charged. They also us multistage charging that will charge about three time faster than most other brands. What this boils down to, that little 3 bank, 6 amp per bank XPS charger will actually charge your batteries faster than a three bank 10 amp per bank charger almost all other brands, and weighs half as much.

Tell'm like I tell my wife. A man put in the dog house could end up in the cat house. If that don't work, just give it a few days and things will be back to normal, In the mean time have fun doing what you want to do while she's too mad to say anything about it. After all, she's already ticked at you so what you got to loose. I've had 37 years experience at this stuff. My best one was after about four days of my wife being the big "B" I got up one morning and asked her what I needed to do to "P***" her off and get that out of the way since everything I'd done for the past four days seem to do that. Didn't have to worry about her bothering me the rest of the day.

I've used those sticks you heat and apply with good results on old ragged boats but if you want it fixed right, take it to someone good with a tig welder and have them weld it. That's the best and shouldn't cost more than $20.

Shaft length is determined by the depth of the transome. A 15" transome uses a short shaft motor, a 20" transome uses a long shaft motor and a 25" uses and Xlong shaft. If you try to mix them they don't work, a long shaft on a 15" transome has the anticav plate down below the bottom of the boat and a short shaft on a 20" transome won't have the water inlets in the water plus the motor will not get one plane If looking for a used motor, stick to finding a Mercury, Evinrude or Johnson. Start getting into other brands and you're gonna run into same major parts problems when you have to work on it.

Javelin Renegade 20 DC 99 225 Ficht Bought this to replace the 285 Pro Stratos 285 Pro 300 hp Johnson (highly modified) Stratos 169V 115 Merc Stays at the lake Fisher MV3 48 Evinrude River boat Lowe 1436 25 Merc, or 9.9 Johnson or TM River/Pond boat Lowe 1232 4 Hp Merc or TM Pond boat Grumman 17' canoe bought this one 44 years ago when I was 14, probably gonna be buried in it. These are what I have right now, but 285 Pro and probably the Fisher are going up for sale, and NO! I'm not a dealer, these are all my personal boats. Then you add 11 various size outboards from 300 hp and down, plus about that many TM's and I would say I've got too dang many.

THe battery is most likely trash, even if it cranks the motor, it's probably not taking a full charge and making the reg/rec charge all the time. If it has caps you can take off, fully charge the battery and do a hydrometer test of each cell. If the are below 1.250, I would change it out

I haven't bought or looked at a group 24 in so many years I couldn't say. I know they used to make them in 95 and you could find a few 100 Ah. The problem you run into when stuffing that many plates into a group 24 case is they have a tendency not to last as long. The plates swell as the battery ages (that's why you see the sides bulging on an older battery) and the group 24, 100 Ah compresses them so much more they have a tendency to short out sooner than what a group 27 will with the same capacity. From what you describe though, I think if you can find two 95 Ah group 24's you would be in good shape.

If you know the amp draw of the TM it's very easy to figure. Running on high, if your TM pulls 50 amps, you would get about 1 1/2 hours run time. You can't use the full AH capacity to figure your run time because at a 50 amp draw, that 100 AH battery becomes about an 80 AH battery. Plus you should never draw a bettery down fully, you should not draw one down below 20% charge or 12 volts. Now if your only running 50% thrust and drawing 25 amps, then the Ah capacity of the battery is back closer to 100 AH and you can run approx 3 1/2 hours on a 100 Ah capacity. So, two 95 - 100 Ah group 24 batteries should give you want. Just remember, in series the two batteries provide 24 volts but they still only have the Ah capacity of one battery. In series two equal batteries will provide twice the voltage but at the same capacity as one battery. I parallel, they will provide the same voltage as one battery but at twice the Ah capacity.

If you don't mind paying the extra few hundred bucks for a hydraulic, they are the only way to go. It make finding the sweet spot a breeze, it lets you drop the motor for a better hole shot and then raise the motor for max top end. Many people never find the sweet spot with a manual because of the amount of work and testing involved in getting it just right. Just be sure you have a water pressure guage installed in your boat.

There are several excellent prop calc programs. They will only give you an estimate though, they have no way of knowing the slip factor. They will let you calculate the slip. All props slip, this can be anywhere from 5% - 35%, the amount of slip varies actual speed greatly and is affected by hull design, engine setup and prop type. Calculating the slip and making changes to the setup to reduce slip is a way to get more speed.

I don't want to get into no word battles but you CAN NOT cross connect two batteries as you have described. They would melt down or blow them up in your face. There are only two ways you can connect them. One is a series connection that gives you 24 volts. To do this you connect The TM positive cable to the positive post of battery A. Connect the negive post on battery A to the positive post of battery B, connect the negative post of battery B to the negative TM cable. The other is parallel where you connect battery A and B positives together and battery A and B negatives together. This gives you 12 volts but at twice the amp hour capacity of one battery.

All of your onboard chargers are designed to plug in and leave them. Don't try this with those little $30 chargers though, even if it does have automatic shut off. If it's one of newer Smart Chargers or Intelli chargers they are designed to plug and leave them just like your onboards. Another option is to charge the batteries to full charge before taking it to storage and then connect a Battery MINDer or similar battery maintainer. These work great for maintaining a battery but are usually too small to charge the battery. I think Wal-Mart sells the Schumaukers for less than $20. The BatteryMINDer high frequency is about the best but cost approx $45 for the 1 amp model but over an extended period of time it will get rid of the Sulpation that almost all marine batteries suffer from.