It could be the charger but I would have the battery load tested first.
Well I got up this morning at 2:40am, left the house by 3am so I could be at the ramp on Barkley Lake at 5. Hooked the boat to my truck, and un-hooked the extension chords to my battery chargers. The Marinco 2 bank charger had the all green ready to go light, needless to say made it to Barkley and after 1 hour of fishing I noticed the trolling motor was slowing down to a crawl, this cut my plans of fishing so had to pack up and head home. When I finally made back home I plugged the charger back in and it’s showing the green and ready to go light, so I checked the voltage at the batteries and it’s not charging. I looked at the fuses and they appeared to be okay. Has anyone had issues like this? And is it possible a 2 year old Marinco charger is bad
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It could be the charger but I would have the battery load tested first.
Fair Winds and Following Seas
Bill H. PTC USN Ret
Chesapeake, Va
Well i had my batteries load tested and there bad. I purchased two new batteries to replace them. Without the batteries installed i plugged in my Marinco 2 bank charger and i don't get any voltage coming to the leads? I am assuming i should be reading 11.8 volts like i get on my minn kota single bank charger for my cranking battery. Is it normal for chargers to go bad?
Go open the hood of your truck --- Check the battery voltage It is probably 12.5 volts -- Now crank the truck and recheck the volts -- you will see 14 to 15 Volts supplied.. by the Alternator. A charger has to have a higher voltage to push current through the battery.. If it only has 11.5 v it will never fully charge a battery and lead to battery Failure. There have been Tons of Batteries replaced that were not Bad --- A Load test is for a fully Charged Battery -- If it is not fully Charged it will always Test Bad. Lots of Salesmen don't know squat about Electricity or how things work.
Another thought - I have a 25 HP tohatsu I thought was not Charging the Battery when Running as it did not Read voltage to the Battery --- Come to find out on the Mechanics corner Of CDC you have to have a special meter that reads peak voltage.. It has such a small increase in voltage you hardly notice it -- Like .2
Okay here’s what my meter reads,my cranking battery on back of the boat wired and connected to minn Kota digital charger while charging between 13.2 -14.1 volts DC, if I unhook the minn Kota charger from the battery and check the voltage coming from that charger it reads 11.8 volts DC. So this tells me that if the charger is plugged in it’s sending voltage to the battery to either charge or maintain, now on the front of my boat with the brand new trolling batteries the read 12.5 volts DC , so I hook them up to the Marinco charger and they still read 12.5 Volts absolutely no difference, the Marinco light is lit green telling me it’s ready. So it’s definitely not sending any voltage to these batteries trying to maintain the current level. I’m assuming the Marinco charger is bad also?
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Bad charger may have been the reason your batteries went bad. You should definitely read more than 12.5 V with the charger hooked up to the battery and plugged in.
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