1/31/07 1 for 2 [@63 incher]...almost didnt make it home

[hawgdawg]

Your fish is not 200# because you can pick it up by yourself.

[Flyin By]

Originally Posted by snooknreds2

his boat has fuses EVERYWHERE, but i dont know if all the circuits are isolated from each other.... we both forgot to mention that in the rush to jump the motor the main circuit breaker switch for hi electrical got broke off!!!!!

the terminal where the main power (hot not ground) wire coming from the start battery to the main distribution block was slightly loose.......my guess is that while we were running that this wire being loose stopped the current being sent from the stater from reaching the battery.


i was just told last night that the stater wont charge the bat if you have the distribution block (not sure if that is what it is really called) turned to both or all batteries. the guy who told me this said he heard it from a mechanic. does any one know if this is true??? i used to always run my boat on both and it would charge the batteries but my boat also had some funky wiring going on in it



nice word usage. not many people know what the galvanic series is all about but i dont understand where you are saying there is a galvanic reaction that would cause corrosion. also how does turning off the batteries stop that from happening??

Now that is a good question, I wonder if the bats charge if they are on all?

[DORADOsteve]

Congrats on the fish

NICE pump. steaks

[flcapt]

I don't know how you ran your batteries but it is a very common mistake to always run the battery switch on "ALL". By doing this you totally loose the safety of having spare batteries. (as you found out the hard way) The problem with running on both is that if you have a short or a bad battery or even a bad alternator you will drain your whole system. The best thing to do is run out one one battery and then switch over to the other for the ride back, this gives you the protection of always having a isolated battery in reserve. Some boats have built in battery isolators to stop cross draining from a bad battery but it doesn't stop a high drain from other systems on the vessel. As far as being able to charge your batteries at the same time, that will work perfectly. The only down side is that you probably will over work your alternator a bit and you will probably not bring your batteries to as high a voltage as you will charging one at a time. In most cases it will work just fine aside from the afore mentioned problem.

I hope this answered some of your questions.

[bluewater25]

I have 3 total batts.only two are ran through a switch(that is recharged through the) motor. The third batt is only attached to the hydro glow. The boat was on batt 1. Every batt is wired to a 3 bank chargter. I leave the hydro batt for back up issues. The charger was plugged in for 3 days. Today I checked and at evey end of the charger there was 13.5-14 volts. So there is no issue with the charger. The weird part is that on the gps i was readind 11.5 volts and the motor would not crank on both. As i said before the entire night out batt1 was used, and after a 25 mile ride how in the hell was that batt drained. my only thought would be the motor is not charging But after sea tow jumped us the gps was reading 12.5, than 5 miles later it was at 13. The motor does not seem to be the problem. I think there is a loose ground or even loose wire somewhere

[flcapt]

well it sounds like you do have a loose connection somewhere. You are also probably correct in thinking it is a bad ground somewhere. On a boat you will find that 90% of electrical and charging problems are on the ground side not the positive side. This is not to say you can not check there, its just where you should always look there first. One hint is also the fact that all 3 batteries went bad, that points directly to a bad ground because that is how they are all connected. Just because you show 13v or higher doesnt mean much. If you have a bad ground somewhere, when you try to draw a load (starting the engines) it will seem like the batteries are dead. When you had the engines running the voltage you were reading was coming from the engines not the batteries, batteries will usually only hold 12.5 volts or close to it. Thats why you always get better radio output when the engines are running, the higher 13.5 to 14.5volts from the alternator. If you have a weak battery connection you will have a very very hard time charging your batteries no matter how long you run your engines. Again check the ground connections because if it was the positive you would probably only have problems with that battery.
Hope that helps you figure it out, I would guess that if you dont do anything you will find the batteries very low again the next time you try to use the boat, let me know what happens.
Frank