Trolling Motor Voltage

[EYEdoctor]

Sorry for what might be a stupid question, but I have a 12 volt trolling motor setup with two batteries. The boat is new to me and I bought two new trolling batteries. Is there a way to tell if the batteries are hooked up correctly. I'm not sure if it matters, but it seems like it might be drawing from just one of the batteries. Is there a way to tell?

Thanks for the help.

[marine_man]

About the only way that I can think of would be to use a multimeter and touch one probe to the positive portion of the trolling motor plug in (up on the bow) and touch the other probe to the negative of the battery you're wondering about and doing the same thing for the other battery. That will verify if you have the grounds connected.

The other way would be to plug the trolling motor in, turn it on and remove the leads from the battery you're pretty sure is working and see if the trolling motor continues to turn... this is dependent on how your have your wires connected though.

If you only have one set of wires headed up to the bow you should have the positive and negative hooked to one battery (we'll call this battery 1) and jumpers connecting the positive of the other battery (battery 2) to the positive post of battery 1 and the same for the negatives - the negative from battery 2 to the negative of battery 1

It might be easier to diagnose if you can explain how you are currently connected to your batteries.

Good Luck!

marine_man

[EYEdoctor]

Thanks, I will take a closer look and get more information.

[ewirz]

I have a similar set up in my T-pro. The boat is wired so there are two sets of wires (set for each battery) that go to each of two trolling motor plug-ins. It will only convert it to 24 volts if you wire the male plug that way (plugin thats conected to trolling motor). Otherwise it will be drawing 12 volts from just one battery. I went around this by wiring the male plug for 12 volts (from instructions for plug)and wiring batteries parrallel, then conecting the one set of wires with current to the plug from the battery (if that makes any sense). I run a 12 volt trolling motor but get twice the run time. It took me a while to figure out which wires were which, doing what marine man suggested. If you have any more question about it, let me know.

ERW

[EYEdoctor]

Thanks ewirz, my setup from what I was told is a two battery 12 volt setup. I assume that would mean it is setup in parallel. I have just one trolling motor plug-in. I just don't know if there is a way to mix up the hook up of the wires to the battery and if it is drawing 12 volts from the 2 batteries.

Thanks for your assistance.