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oldtimer57.
2015 CaracalNew trolling and cranking batteries – 2 months old I drained the batteries today fishing in high wind and heavy grass. Came home to immediately put batteries on charge. Cranking battery shows no light. One of trolling motor batteries shows immediate green. Out of curiosity started checking fuses. When I grabbed the fuses on the positive lead from charger to trolling motor batteries, they were extremely hot. Charger had only been plugged in for maybe 5 minutes. Repeated this a couple times with unplugging and plugging with same results. Charger is unplugged because Im afraid something is going to start burning. Also, I had good power most of the day. Slowly having to turn up power on trolling motor. Late in the day trolling motor went from decent power to very little in the blink of an eye. Full power was barely moving the boat. Dont know if this is a coincidence to my other issues. 24 volt min Kota Noco Genius Gen 3 ChargerThoughts????
Im having similar issue of one bank light not turning on until other TM batteries are charged then the bad bank charges of unused power to finally show green. I dont have low power issues on water though Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I quit using on board chargers all together. I have tried several different brands over the years and they have all failed me. I now use three Schumacher Ship N Shore chargers and have fixed all my battery problems. It takes me about five minutes to get everything hooked up and I have to drag all that with me when I go on the road but the trouble is well worth it to have no battery problems. And it took about 12 LBS out of my boat.
BCB has long been a proponent of on board chargers and offers the Lester brand for trolling charging. We also regretfully started the on board charger trend and when we did the eventuality was someone else would as they were headed that direction from a charger company aspect. The are on board on all sorts of equipment and they definitely were going that way on marine.Bass Cat and Yar-Craft have switched in 2017 from NOCO to MinnKota on the standard upper end chargers. They do still offer Professional Mariner also in the mid lineup, as a support to Lester, for quick road use without carrying the charger on those one night travel days.
I am curious what the pros do. Are they using onboard chargers or do they go with external chargers. I always wondered when there may be an issue with power quality at some sites too! I have never had an issue with an onboard charger thankfully.
The better oriented BCB pros go external charger. We have also sold other Elite pros, other than BCB, Lester chargers.
I owned a minn kota charger with my older cat. My 13 model has the nocco. I done extensive test with the nocco. Checking voltage before and after charging. Then i would charge ot with a manual charger. What i learned was the nocco was charging and appeared to be charging the baterries. Though the nocco was just not giving a full charge. I bought a lester from one of the members of this forum. The lester is awesome. A full charge every time. Im using a old 12 volt charger to keep my cranker charged. It takes only minimal time to hook each up. I truly believe the lester will extend battery life simply because it gives a consistent charge everytime. Just my honest thoughts and opinion based on my personal testing.2013 PANTERA 2MERCURY 200 PRO XSMINNKOTA 80LB FORTREX25 fury
I was having issues with a new NAPA/Deka cranking battery and was pretty sure it was the onboard charger. I picked up a West Marine marine charger for $79 and 98% of the problems went away. Battery charges much faster and the unit has some nice features. The 15 amps vs. 8 Im sure also makes a big difference.
Another note. If you run the troller until it quits, battery voltage is WAY down. Quite a few chargers wont charge a battery that is that far gone, they will think something is wrong and not charge it. Ive “saved” a few such batteries over the years by connecting them to a plain vanilla 10 amp charger overnight, to get them partially charged, then back to the normal charger which might well take off and work now that the batteries are not reading such a low starting voltage. Note that I am talking about a flat-rate charger with no electronics to taper the charge, test the battery, measure temperature or anything else other than to produce a roughly 14 volt output at 10 amps max.Always worth a try.IMHO the best chargers are often the most expensive ones, although there are exceptions. But a $30 charger is not going to be very good long-term.2008 Pantera Classic2014 Mercury Pro XS 200
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