trolling motor question

[limited out]

hi, I have a 70 thrust Minnekota tiller sytle trolling motor and my wires starting smoking and went haywire this morning while fishing.

Question on the wiring: there is a black and a black/red cord coming out of the trolling motor that are jimmy rigged to a three prong plug in for the boat. The black cord is wired to the black on the three prong, the black/red is wired to an orange wire on the three prong, and then there is a red wire coming out of the three prong just hanging loose. Can someone please tell me if i need to wire the red on the three prong also to the black/red wire for the trolling motor similar to the orange wire? Any help is greatly appreciated...

[Wanderer]

Questions:

How long have you been running it the way it's currently wired?

Did the trolling motor wires smoke or did the plug wires smoke?

Are all the connections in good shape?

[Cliff Wagenbach]

I believe that you are running off of a 24 volt plug-in. If you hook the red and orange together you will fry a 12 volt motor!

You should probably be running off of the red and black wires only if you have a 12 volt motor..

Cliff

[limited out]

thanks for the response Cliff. I am not much of an electrical expert. My trolling motor is a 24 volt and i have the option for 12 or 12/24 volt on my warrior boat so wouldn't i want to run it as 24 volt? I think i had it set to 12 volt before.

[Down Deep]

I have another question. Do you have an inline fuse or circuit breaker installed? If you don't I would be wise to install one or other. The circuit breaker can be bought at any outdoor store that sells boat equipment and installs right on the battery terminal.

[Cliff Wagenbach]

Limited out,

If your motor is a 24 volt then you have to run it on 24 volt.

Also install a 50 amp circuit breaker at the battery as suggested!

You have to have the right plug on the motor cable to work right in a 24 volt plug-in.

If in doubt, have an expert wire it for you and save a lot of grief and expense. That is what I did!

Cliff

[Whoaru99]

Link to response(s) in the other thread started of same topic.

http://www.hotspotoutdoors.com/forum/ubb...ing#Post3107553

With regard to a 50A fuse/breaker, that may be appropriate for the motor but one MUST ensure the boat wiring is capable of handling that level of current before just doing it. The breaker/fuse is there primarily to keep the wiring and the boat from burning up so it must be sized according to the wiring it protects, not the demand of the load.

[limited out]

thanks guys yes, i'll probably just have someone look at it so i don't burn my boat down in the middle of the lake! I believe my warrior boat is wired to handle the 24 volt since it has the 12/24 volt flip switch at the controls but i could be wrong. The smoke was coming from the plug wire not the trolling motor wire possibly due to bad spice? I also had my 24 volt battery only running off of one battery and the control switch set to 12 volt which sounds like a big no-no? Definitely kind of electrically challenged. Thanks again.