Thread: Battery Tender For Trolling Motor

I have no regrets installing a 10 amp 2 bank on board charger for my 24 volt trolling motor, did it 2 years ago...Should have done it 10 years ago on my old boat. I just plug the charger into an extension cord and walk away, it will charge then maintain the batteries. I use the Battery Tender plug for my trolling motor but have not tried their chargers.

I have a 3 bank on the current boat, plug in 1 cord and let the charger take care of the rest. Had a 2 bank charger on the last boat. The batteries were 2011 year stamp. I replaced them last summer.

Now I love my 3 bank charger in my big boat. But on my little boat I do have a battery tender that I can plug into a harness that came with the tender that I leave on the battery. I use the tender on a little flat bottom that is sitting outside all the time.

Originally Posted by RobertFL

I have no regrets installing a 10 amp 2 bank on board charger for my 24 volt trolling motor, did it 2 years ago...Should have done it 10 years ago on my old boat. I just plug the charger into an extension cord and walk away, it will charge then maintain the batteries. I use the Battery Tender plug for my trolling motor but have not tried their chargers.

I have 4 wires coming from my batteries to where the female receptacle is. The battery tender only has place for 2 wires on the female receptacle. How do I determine which two wires to hook up to it? I assume I will have to wire the batteries in series (jumper from battery 1 + to battery 2 - poles. would I then only, say, run the power wires from batteries to female receptacle with say wire for battery 1 + hooked to battery 1 + and wire marked battery 1 - hooked to battery 2 -......hope that makes sense. (and I would not use the other two wires. Boat is wired as a 12/24 but trolling motor is a 24 volt Minn Kota 80# thrust.

Osnola, go to the Battery Tender website. There you will find some great information on how to install every thing from single battery up to 4 battery systems.

I have in the past. Onboard is much better IMO.

Some of those chargers will draw power if they are hooked to the battery and left unplugged. That is something to watch out for if you plan on leaving it in the boat.

You'll need a pretty high output model too, most tenders/maintainers produce less than an amp, you want at least 4 amps to charge the average deep cycle battery in a reasonable amount of time, especially when you start talking about dividing it up between multiple batteries.