I'm having battery issues due to running my stereo all the time when I'm in my boat. The battery is new and if I keep it on the charger at home it lasts a while, but turn on the Go Light and/or the aircraft frogging light: battery's dead in no time. Part of my problem is the fact that I only have one battery, which I plan to remedy, but the other problem is that I'm pretty sure my motor is not CDI. Is there any way to change that or to put on a higher output alternator or both?

I'll trade you everything to swap to Cdi, plus 150. My motor is a 2011 with 65 hrs. 10 hrs on high rev coils. So that would be trading the flywheel, stator, and high rev coils plus your 150. Pm me if interested.

Rod

Might be overkill, but I run a generator hooked up to a converter and wired to the trolling motor/radio/head lamps battery.

I can run my stereo with 600 watt amp, and three 100 watt head lamps all night long and never run out of battery.

It's a Honda 2000 so genny noise isn't an issue. My motors idle is louder than the genny.

I just don't trust my cdi to keep the battery charged running lights and radio.

You don't know if your motor is a CDI or not?

B.. what year is your motor?

it should say marine vanguard if its a CDI

Sorry, the motor is a 2009. It doesn't say marine Vanguard, it's just a standard Vanguard Commercial. I've gotta put my meter on the battery and see at what RPM's it starts charging, if it even is. Only running my stereo and running WOT the majority of the day, the battery is still dying on me. I'm wondering if maybe my alternator has just gone out. I woulda done it this afternoon, but I rode yesterday, so it's dead as a door nail today. I had it anchored up at the fireworks yesterday evening, and I had to leave it idling the whole time I was anchored just so I could get back to the ramp. As you know, "idling" while anchored with a GDSD simply means tightening a bungee cord from the tiller handle to the deck and letting the prop spin the whole time. PITA Anyway, once I get around to charging it up, I'll check what kinda voltage my alternator is putting out. Also, I'm not sure if I really understand what autogateman is offering???

He's offering to trade all the parts to convert your motor to a cdi or "marine motor"...flywheel, stator, regulator, coils, etc.. I don't think they are plug and play though and you should def check before tearing your motors apart.

I believe they do make a 50a charging system for your motor though. Call boatdr about that. I think it's relatively expensive and it's probably a whole lot cheaper to buy two good batteries and charge them at home on a regular basis, but I do think the parts are available if that's what you want to do.

What you have now charges zero at idle, starts charging at around 2000 rpms and goes up to 20amps max.

I'm thinking that your rpms have to be over 2500, but I don't remember. If you look on the side of the motor with the starter you should see a white or sort of clear plastic plug.Pull it apart and look inside to make sure nothing is burned up. Sometimes that may burn up and give you some charging issues.

There used to be a thread on checking the voltage at battery while running the engine. I think you need to get the rpms over 2500 and you should see 14 volts at the battery.

Yeah, I know the plug you're talking about, I'll pull it apart and inspect it then spray some contact cleaner on it. Ingtail24 also pointed out my voltage regulator to me yesterday and told me to pull it off and clean the backside with a wire brush where it grounds itself to the metal shroud around the block. I'll do those two things, plus charge the battery so I can crank it and check battery voltages not running, idling, and above 2000 or 2500 RPM's. If I still can't get answers, I'll get in touch with BoatDR, and start seeing what other possibilities or options there are.

i know my buddy has took the CDi parts out of a engine and put the older coils in..

so it can be done.

Get with Andy because there is a way to trouble shoot the stator also

Thanks, I'll do that because to be perfectly honest, I don't have any idea what the stator is.

The stator is pretty much what you are calling your alternator. It's under the flywheel. Works with the magnets on the bottom of the flywheel to create electricity, that electricity runs through the regulator on the outside of the fan shroud which steps the voltage down to an acceptable level for charging your battery. Not a very scientific explanation, but that's the gist of it anyway.

You can check to see if it is kicking in at all just by turning the motor on, revving it up in the 3000 range just to be sure and putting a volt meter on the battery. If you aren't seeing somewhere in the 13.6-14.4 range, you aren't charging. Then you can call andy and see what to do next or search around on here to find out what he has told other people to do in the past.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna do next, I just gotta charge it up or jump it off first. I wanted to do it this afternoon, but I was hung over at work all day, so I came home and been on the couch ever since...

Might sound silly, but check the battery cable & make sure the ground is actually going to the block & the hot is going to the starter. I've got a customer rig right now that the cables were red on one end & black on the other. Didn't charge for shit & drained battery while off.

Paddled back to the launch after a hunt on time because of what turned out to be corrosion on the terminal connections at the motor/starter. That was a LONG 3 hours of paddling!

Simple solution, don't blast your stereo like a douchebag everywhere you go...



Problem solved.

Imagine that. Paleohuntr finally posts something in the engines and mods section instead of his rat hole the duck blind, yet it still has nothing to do with engines and/or mods.

Sure it does, if he wasn't blasting Lady GaGa and Britney Spears his battery wouldn't go dead, pretty simple even some body from MS should have been able to figure it out.

actually it makes no difference as to the volume a stereo system is being played. It is either on and pulling amps or off and not pulling amps. So its not quite as simple as someone living in Idaho would like to make it out to be.

Actually it is. It definitely draws more current when it's turned up. It only draws enough current to output what it is being asked to output, so when muted or turned all the way down it isn't drawing very much at all. Most devices also become very inefficient when being pushed close to their max, which means if you listen to it all the way up, it's going to draw considerably more current than it does at say 3/4 level. On top of that, if he is using an amplifier, they are capable of producing a lot more power than they are rated for, but they do it very inefficiently which would only compound the problem. Don't know if he is using an amp or just a radio, but if he's using an amp, he could be drawing considerably more current than he thinks he is.

Use crayons cb, he is a little slow...

This


Plus this


Means you can run this

for 6 hours, along with three 100 watt headlamps and still have a full battery when you leave the lake.

Or you can go with the extra battery alone and get about 3-4 hours of fun.

No amp, just the head end unit. Definitely not gonna run a genny every time I go for a ride, but a good idea for frogging. Still haven't charged the boat up to check it yet, hungover again...

What type, brand and size is your battery? I've been using AC Delco Voyagers in group size 27 for years and can run a similar load for a lot longer time period than you're experiencing. Although I've never had a problem with this size, I just stepped up to the group 29 because it was almost the same price as the 27. You never hear people complain that they have too much battery power.

I would definitely recommend getting an onboard battery charger and plugging it in every time you get home. I'd also get a battery disconnect switch to eliminate any parasitic drain.

One other thing you might look into is a cheap solar panel charger. I used to have an ice chest radio with limited battery power, so I installed one on top of the ice chest. It actually helped out the battery enough so that it wouldn’t cut out halfway through a trip. If your charging circuits and everything else check out ok, it might be worth a shot seeing as they only cost $10-15 from Harbor Freight.

I think carrying 2 batteries is the way to go. One battery for cranking, nav lights and bilge. The other battery for your goodies.

Yea, I should have said that too. I guess I just assume everyone has a trolling motor and therefore a second battery. Probably not a good assumption to make.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but I did just post part of this on another thread for another reason. Here goes the latest:

Upon charging the battery, I was getting somewhat sporadic voltage readings at various RPM's. I moved the volt meter directly onto the contacts on the motor, and I was getting much better readings. It was still waiting until around 2300-2500 RPM's before it starting putting out voltage, but then as I'd ease back down to 1900-2000 RPM's, it was still reading over 12 volts. I did find it odd that at 3500-3600 RPM's, it would never go much, if at all, above 13.5V, however. Anyway, from this, I reasoned that I need to remove all of my connections and clean them very well, and go from there.

Then something else happened about an hour ago when I stopped by a battery supply place near my office where my company has an account:

They supply batteries to the Coast Guard and other military around here. I bought two GINORMOUS 12V batteries "used" that came out of deuce and a halfs (6 months old each). He said they're the same ones they sell them for Abrams tanks, and when he load tests them, they max out his tester. Anyway, they were only $40 each and he said they'll run my stereo and two spot lights for DAYS. He also made up two new battery leads for me the same way he has to do them for Coast Guard boats: lead soldered and crimped and sealed with heat shrink. I'm hoping I've solved my battery issues. For the record, I was only gonna get one battery, but when he told me he had two in and the price, I decided to snatch them both up.

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