Ann-Marie

HOW I GOT RID OF ALL MY TRAILER WIRING PROBLEMS. I made up a 2x4 beam that would lock onto the rear of the boat. In my case the rudder was removable so I made pins that just dropped into the rudder bearings. You can make something equivalent. The all the lights and license plate were attached to the beam. Before putting the boat in the water you lifted the lights off and put them in the back of the vehicle. After loading you just put it back on. NO ELECTRICAL WIRING ON THE TRAILER AT ALL.

If you want to save time and space, and even save a lot of money on the charger, all you need is a Combiner100. Smaller than a pack of cigarettes and under $50 it will let you use any 12 volt single output portable charger. Just clip it to the starting battery and both batteries will get charged. An added benefit is whenever you are running the outboard, the trolling battery will get charged too.

Charging at 2 amps is not necessarily better and if it is a lead acid battery, it may be worse. For most modern chargers with automatic control, the 10 amp setting will be the standard. The 2 amp setting is for long term storage maintenance and the 15 amp if for emergency recovery however most chargers can't maintain their maximum output for long. These settings are a maximum current. Setting it at 10 or 15 amps does not force that amount of current into the battery. The current will taper off to zero as the battery approaches full charge.

They are also date 2004 so remaining life may be minimal.

There is no problem using unmatched batteries in parallel. That is only a concern if you are using them in series.

The second breaker may need replacing. As breakers age it seems to make their trip point get lower - perhaps this is a design safety-guard? In particular, breakers are generally not intended to be used as on/off switches and just the mechanical switching seems to lower the trip point. Check that it is a 50 amp breaker - it may be rated too low. You don't have to disconnect the series connection for a multi-output charger.

I don't think that is quite correct. If a battery is in good working condition, the liquid that is lost is water. The acid electrolyte left behind increases in concentration as the original water is converted to hydrogen. When you add distilled water you are replacing lost water and restoring the original electrolyte density. Unless liquid has actually been spilled, you should never need to add acid to a battery. If the battery has been allowed to lose liquid to the top of the plates or lower, you need to avoid stratification. The water you are adding is much lighter than the acid down in the plates so it will just float on top. After adding water it is a good idea to overcharge the battery enough to cause bubbles to form, using the equalization setting on your charger if it has one. These bubbles rising in the electrolyte will stir the liquid up and mix the lighter water with the heavy acid to restore the original concentration.

It is generally important to match batteries that are used in series. This doesn't mean it won't work but if they are different capacity and one battery runs down before the other, the good one will try to force current through the dead one and damage it. When they are matched, they both run down together and there is much less risk of one damaging the other. So while it will work, be very alert to loss of power and stop using them well before the weaker one is discharged.

Seriously, since batteries don't GO flat, they discharge, if your battery were to develop an internal short and discharge into itself it can get hot enough to melt the casing. A high current short like this is extremely rare but not impossible.

Sounds like you ran till it was flat.

Bottom line is there is a 90% chance the battery has died and a 10% chance it is a problem with the alternator.

As you increase motor size you are increasing the current it can draw. When you draw current through the wiring you get a voltage drop. The heavier the conductor, the less voltage drop you get. Although the voltage drop in the original wiring may have been acceptable for a smaller motor, the increased current can produce an unacceptable voltage drop. If the old wiring is 8 or 10 gauge you should replace it with 6 gauge. If it is a long run from the battery(ies) to the motor, a heavier gauge will help.

Make sure to put some insect screening mesh in any air inlet ports on the engine. Mud daubing wasps just about ruined my 40 HP Honda 4 stroke. The honeycomb air filter in it made a perfect condominium and late comers filled up all the spaces between the cooling fins. I had to dismantle half the engine to clean it up.

This is quite common but keep in mind that you are running these items off the starting battery and if it gets too low you may not be able to start. I would monitor it with a volt meter for the first few trips so you get to know how long you can run on the starting battery without it getting too low.

It is virtually a brand new battery and extremely unlikely that there is anything wrong with it. Even the older style chargers without shut-off are designed to limit voltage to a safe level unless they have a "Fast Charge" setting which should be monitored. The main reason for modern "intelligent" chargers is they can exceed the safe voltage level during the early stages and thus force charge in quicker, then as the battery approaches full voltage where it would start to bubble, the smart ones cut the voltage back. Older style chargers that aren't so "smart" just use the highest safe voltage all the time which can extend charging time considerably. I wouldn't even go to the trouble of getting it tested. The 2 and 10 amp settings don't really set how many amps are being put in, the are an approximate MAXIMUM input. If you have an ammeter on it, even at the 10 amp setting it will show virtually zero amps or an occasional flick on the meter above zero once the battery is fully charged. The 10 amp setting will be very close to the "bubbling" voltage so if left for a few months there may be a little loss of water. Just go fishin'.

I've had 4 stroke and 2 stroke engines and I've had much better reliability and maintainability with the simple 2 stroke. In recent years they have had a bad name due to their pollution and efficiency problems. Below is a post I copied from another bulletin board that suggests that modern design 2 strokes can now compete with 4 stroke and should not be ignored.

Warning:- WD40 is not a penetrating oil and is no match in comparison to standard penetrating oils and fades in comparison to Kroil. While it may appear to have some penetrating qualities, WD40 is NOT A LUBRICANT. Using WD40 on bearings, especially on the sintered metal bearings on small motors that are impregnated with lubricant, will cause rapid failure. The solvents in WD40 will remove the existing lubricants and the bearing will seize up. WD40 is a combination of solvents specifically designed to displace water, not lubricate. WD stands for Water Displacement.

If you can find some Kroil, it is an incredible penetrating oil. If Kroil doesn't loosen it you will have to drill them out. I had received a sample of Kroil a week before working on a steel hatch. The bolts were rusty but we had managed to get the nuts off. One bolt underneath the hatch was particularly stubborn. We had beaten it with a hammer and tried rotating it for 20 minutes. My husband suggested I try the Kroil so I sprayed some on it and went to make lunch. When we returned from lunch it had fallen out and was lying on the top of the tank underneath.

As pointed out, gauge for gauge the current carrying capacity is the same. However using speaker wire, or welding cable which is very similar, is a bad choice. In the marine environment copper deteriorates due to corrosion and oxidation. The way to combat this deterioration is by protection and oversizing the wire so it still works despite damage. Protection can be in the form of the insulation and covering the exposed ends. This is helpful but not sufficient. The next protection is to use tinned copper wire. Each strand of the wire is plated with tin to keep oxygen and moisture away from the surface of the copper. All marine grade wire is tinned but the speaker cables and welding cables are rarely tinned. Finally the defense against failure due to corrosion is to reduce the surface area of the copper. Copper corrodes on the surface. Less surface means slower corrosion. Ideally a solid copper conductor will have the least surface area but you risk mechanical failure due to vibration in a boat. Regular stranded wire of marine grade is the closest alternative. The fine strands of speaker wire and welding cable are an invitation for disaster. They have maximum surface area and the small wire diameter encourages capillary action to pull moisture in and hold it.

Check with jonestrollingmotor@cableone.net. He is highly qualified and highly recommended. He will take the time to help you.

Try it on the TM battery first. If you get interference when the TM is running then try it on the starting battery. Unless your outboard requires massive CCA I would use a deep cycle for the starting battery too. Deep cycle batteries have ample CCA for starting most outboards and you will get the added advantage of the extra deep cycle capacity for running instruments, etc.

Being on the floor causes no problems with a battery.

A trickle charger for 30 minutes is virtually useless. It would add less than 0.5% of battery capacity. Trickle chargers tend to be less sophisticated than the more expensive on-board or portable chargers so I would have less faith in a trickle charge indicator. Most chargers, even the smart ones, will show the battery charged quicker as the battery ages when in fact the total charge absorbed gets less. As it ages the internal resistance increases so the voltage on the terminals rises quicker than it does for a battery in good condition, fooling the charger into thinking it is charged.

Actually for charging in the field, a Combiner100 for under $50 at a number of retail outlets will charge your trolling motor from the alternator on your outboard and many report that it is fully charged by the time they get back to the trailer (YMMV). Our Combiners are fully waterproof and over 30,000 have been installed since we started manufacturing them in 1993. If you have a short run from the fishing spot and it needs a little more you can hook it to the charging line from the vehicle. If you do need 24 volt charging, the Trollbridge24 for under $90 will do it at less than half the price of the Stay-N-Charge Allcharge and the Trollbridge24 comes with a one word warranty "UNCONDITIONAL". For 36 volt systems, the new Trollbridge36 is now available. List $199, but it will probably discount to around $160.

You can leave it on, don't worry about it. Even though modern batteries have a lower self discharge rate and may only require 50/1000 of an amp or less to maintain you can still use a 10 amp or a 2 amp output. Those ratings refer to the maximum capacity of the charger, not how much it will pump into the battery when turned on. If it has a meter you will notice that on either setting the amount of current flowing will taper off to zero as the battery reaches full charge. It order to push more current in for a fast charge the charger will put out a higher voltage. If it is an electronic "smart" charger it will switch back to a lower voltage once the battery is charged. The big advantage of smart chargers is that during the early stages of charging they can temporarily force a higher voltage than would normally be safe into the battery and thus reduce the charging time. They are "smart" enough to reduce that voltage before it does any harm. If you have a simple switchable 10/2 "dumb" charger, the voltage it puts out on 10 amps will be safe but fairly close to the maximum allowable voltage while the 2 amp setting will have a lower voltage. Both settings will maintain your battery fully charged but for long term idle conditions, running at the lower 2 amp setting will reduce any risk of water loss.