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I was headed to the boat ramp for a evening ride with the ole lady. About 6 miles from the house I looked in my mirrors and saw a cloud behind my boat. At first I didn't think anything of it because I was passing new construction on the road and figured it was just dust billowing up. Once past the construction the cloud looked thicker so I pulled over. Come to find out my battery had bounced on the high quality Texas farm to market roads and pinched the power wire and started shorting melting every wire on the posts, the ground cable all the way to the block and burning holes in the battery itself. I'm just glad this happened during the day and not early in the morning where I couldn't see the smoke.


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Good lord... That coulda been real bad.

That could have been a lot worse!!

Last year I had my hot wire for my trim ground out to the boat and somehow ended up melting my throttle cable.

I'm going to let my buddy wire my boat and hopefully be done right so I won't have to worry about it.

How would you prevent that?


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Strapping the battery down tight. Alot of these boats don't allow for that conveniently, so a battery box is the next best thing.

Been there and done that while ridding across a rough lake in a small boat. The cable that crossed both terminals welded itself to them. Bad situation, especially having the gas tank right next to it. Luckily it didn't go boom and I lived to tell about it.

That's what I was thinking when I saw the primer bulb right behind the melted cables... That's the kinda thing that goes from bad to catastrophic In a hurry.

I am most defiantly getting a battery box and rethinking how I have my set up. In the picture with the fuel system you can see an angle aluminum frame that he battery sat in and that corner is what cut the wire.


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I had my push pole bounce down and land on top of both of my battery terminals one timè going down the road. Melted a terminal down into the battery. Push pole gets strapped down now.

Isnt a battery box required by law in your state? It is in WI. Glad everything ended well for you.

Can't fit a battery in a box under a standard Gatortail hunt deck. I've got a piece of the Sears turf over the top of my battery terminals and the battery is blocked in place.

If anybody has better ideas on how to secure and protect a battery under the hunt deck I'm all ears.


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Idea, build a wood one with screws to your dimensional needs, take it apart, 3 coats of poly on every surface, put it back together and silicone the screw heads. Or. Take a plastic battery box/lid combo, keep cutting the box until it fits in there with the lid. Either way you decide to go those are two solutions to your problem

It's simple. get a mud motor. shoot ducks in the face.

GoDevil 18ft, 2014 model. Battery is in a box strapped down. Found the battery & box on its side after a 15 mile drive home from Trinity marsh. I always check the cheap strap before and after a trip, but I gotta find something better. Heavy duty cable ties might be an improvement.
Trolling motor battery is in a box under the front deck and basically unsecured. Next to the gas tank. I need to do something with that too. Maybe a milk crate there.

Speaking of batteries....I have a Battery Tender charger that I use on my bay boat to keep the motor batteries hot. They supplied "pigtails" to install on the battery posts that the charger plugs into. The 2 wire plug is the same size as a trolling motor quick connect on the shelf in the boat aisle in your friendly neighborhood WalMart. MinnKota brand, but Attwood looks exactly the same, and same price. I put them on both GoDevil batteries and both motor batteries on the big boat. I cut the clips off my Schrader charger and put a quick connect on it. Battery Tender has a pigtail with the quick connect on one end and clips on the other end so I'm not screwed if I need clips for something.

I had the same thing happen to mine recently. Pinched the positive wire when I trimmed up after driving the boat onto the trailer at the launch. Didn't notice the smoke cloud until I pulled it out into the parking lot. Melted a post on my battery but surprisingly nothing damaged on the motor.