I'm having issues with my trolling motor, and I'm not good with electronics. So went to go fish, deployed my motor, hit the pedal and nothing... Went home to check everything and all connections seem to be in good shape. I disconnected the wires coming off the pedal at the splice and checked my voltage coming from the batteries, the wires coming from the batteries have 24.4 volts (24 volt system and motor) so I assumed it was my motor. To check I took the motor off the mount and connected the wires coming off the pedal direct to the batteries and it works fine. So in doing more testing I discovered that when the wires coming off the batteries aren't connected to the pedal, I have 24.4 volts, as soon as I touch those wires to the wires going into the pedal, the Volts at the connection drop to 12.3 even with the switch on the pedal in the off posistion.  No idea what's going on. Any ideas?!?!?

Did you check your fuse?

After talking to a tech and doing further testing its looking like I have a partial break somewhere in my wires. The tech said some of the wire strands can be broken but will still send 24 volts if unconnected but when connected to the motor it applies a load and the remaining wire can't handle it, so the volts drop. Looks like new wires are the solution.

Wouldnt cause it to not work though. My maxxum 70 will run on 12v. 

You should check the battery under a load.A good battery tester is a good thing to have.If it's 2 12v batteries series connected ,one or both batteries could be dead.A dead battery can still drive a volt meter but nothing else.

GL

The wiring was my issue. Found a bad spot in the wires, replaced all the wire with new 6ga and new fuse and everything is back up and running.