24 volt trolling motor question

[behmer]

I have a 24 volt motorguide that the end of the conections, I have four leads, 1 red, 1 red/white, 1 black, 1 black/white. I am running two 12 volt optimax's with a jumper between the one pos and the one neg terminals. The previous owner had the one red lead and the one black lead connected to each terminal opposite the jumper lead. The other two leads are what is confusing me......the two leads that were not connected to any terminals (red/white) (black/white) were shielded from each other and taped off, basically eliminating the need for these two excess leads from the trolling motor. The manual's picture looks like they attached both red/white with red to the one positive opposite jumper, the black/white and black were attached to the negative opposite the jumper.....I am totally confused on the correct wiring........I know the jumper lead is correct but don't know which leads to use; ie., the 2 with two tied off or the four doubled up with the othersthatwere previously attached to the terminals. Please help Thanks

[PerchJerker]

I have a theory for you.

My guess is the 4 leads are to connect to two 12-volt batteries - red and black to battery #1, red/white and black/white to battery #2. No jumper between the two batteries. The internal wiring in the motor must convert the two 12 volt currents into one 24 volt current.

If you have a jumper between your two 12 volt batteries, what you really have is one 24 volt battery. My guess is that using just the red and black wires is all the motor needs to operate - it brings in a 24 volt current, therefore no need for the leads for the "second" battery.

It does not sound right to me to connect both red wires to one battery and both black wires to the other battery, with a jumper between the batteries. In that case each set of leads is bringing 24 volts into the motor. MotorGuide probably built safeguards into the motor to recogize this and not turn it into a 48 volt current, but I would not chance it without verifying it with MotorGuide. A call or email to customer service should get you a quick answer.

FYI, in my case my boat has 2 sets of leads prewired to a console with a power port. The plug that goes in the power port lets you run the 2 batteries parallel (bigger 12 volt battery) or in series (1 24 volt battery). There is no jumper between the batteries (it happens in the plug). I think a similar thing is going on inside your MotorGuide.

Good luck, I hope this helps.

[ice_shack]

Go to motorguides web site. They have owners manuals you can download with the proper wiring diagram for your model.