Jumping Starting Battery?

[Da Beak]

Can you use your trolling motor batteries (24v) to jump your starting battery (12v)without removing the cable between the 2 trolling batteries? Would this damage the starting battery?

[Eric Wettschreck]

Anytime you hook up 24VDC to a 12 VDC circut and don't damage anything you should consider yourself lucky.

If it were me I'd just take one of the trolling batteries and swap it out for the cranking battery. It will at least get you started and off the lake.

[Sutty]

I am not an expert but if you only hooked the jumper cables to one of the batteries you only would be drawing 12 even if they are still hooked together. Anyway that was reported earlier here in another battery post.

It would be easy enough to test with a voltmeter in any case

[Jeremy airjer W]

I do believe sutty is correct. Hook the jumper cables up to one battery and there should be 12 volts. if you hooked the positive to one battery and the negative to the other battery there would be twenty four volts.

[Sutty]

What I remember reading is that you would not want to hook something up permanently to one of the batteries because your trolling motor would only last as long as the weaker battery

[Da Beak]

Thanks for the info guys! I got stuck this weekend, and I wasn't sure if it would be safe to do or not.