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I have never had an on board charger. I purchased a ProSport20 Plus and was looking at battery groups that the tech book recommends.
Has anyone used this charger and what batteries worked best? Does it really matter on group sizes if they are all 12vdc? Thanks.
as far as trolling motor batteries go. Keep the same size & type. Sounds like a 2 bank charger so if it is put one bank on one trolling motor battery & one the other & you'll be fine.
if you select agm batteries, be sure the charger is recommended for agm.
regular chargers can damage agm batteries from too high voltage.
[QUOTE=Les Young;573659]as far as trolling motor batteries go. Keep the same size & type. Sounds like a 2 bank charger so if it is put one bank on one trolling motor battery & one the other & you'll be fine.[/QUOTE]
Its a 3 bank and my plan is to have 2 in parallel for max amp hours on my 12 volt trolling motor. I’ll switch over to 24 volt (series) once I buy a diff trolling motor. The 3rd one marked as engine will be for lights, electronics and accessories.
It just seemed funny to have batteries in parallel and hooking up leads to the batteries seperatly but if it’s supposed to be ok then I’m cool with it. I best call the tech line to be sure.
Thanks!
Parallel or series for 24 , 36 or whatever has nothing to do with it. Just hook up one bank per battery to the right battery post & you'll be good. Actually Minn Kota told me as long as i didn't go over 20 amps per battery was good. i used 2 banks on a single battery for years & that battery was still going when i sold that boat. You'll be fine.
All the information given is correct. Most new style battery chargers can properly charge agm batteries but just in case you have an agm battery look at your chargers owners manual and make sure it says approved to charge agm batteries. Most all your new chargers have a built in circuit board that can sense if a battery is wet cell or agm and send the appropriate charge profile to them. Even though a charger may be 10 amps it does not simply just send 10 amps until the battery is charged. If my memory is correct a wet cell starts out with about 50-75% of the available amps then it goes to full amperage and trickles off on the end. A agm starts out real low amps and slowly increases the amps until the end, then it slowly trickles the final charge. AGM's are a little more sensitive to the heat build up in the process of charging, therefore they have a different profile in which amps is sent to recover them. You can charge an agm with the old style charge but it will shorten the battery life due to heat build up because its sends the amperage in too fast at the initial start up of the charge.
You can also have different type batteries on a battery charger. Example...my cranking battery is agm and both my trolling motor batteries are regular wet cell. My charger (NOCO GEN 3) determines what type battery I have and sends the appropriate charge to each one. The reason this works is because you are hooking the CHARGER leads to each individual battery. I have my trolling motor batteries wired to each other in series but the leads from my battery charger to my batteries are individual lines isolated to just one battery. Hopefully that made sense the way I described it.
As previously mentioned you can run two 12V batteries on a 12V trolling motor ONLY if hooked in parallel. When doing this or if you have a 24V system I like both batteries to be identical to each other. If you have one that has weaker specifications then one will get get worked harder than the other and it will have a shorter life. By having them the same they charge and discharge the same. You never have one that is a little weak or stronger than the other because they are both the same.
If you have lithium batteries then they require a special charger just for lithium batteries.
Thanks for the replies!