DC battery questions

[Crow Terminator]

My trolling motor is a 24v set up. I have two 12v batteries in a series to make 24v. Continuous trolling is going through them fairly quickly. To increase running time, I would need to increase my Ah capacity. Is my only option going to be, going to a 24v battery, and adding a 2nd 24v battery in parallel to increase Ah? Or could I connect two 12v batteries in series to make 24v...then add a third 12v in parallel, to just add Amp Hours? Or is that not possible? I've saw where others have asked about this on other forums but nobody ever answers.

I may be trying to do too much at once. My trolling motor is 80# 24v. The wiring charts say 6GA wire is what I need. My boat was wired with 8 GA. I decided to wire it with 6 GA. I did that yesterday. Then I ran into what may or may not have been a contributing problem. My plug and receptacle on my boat wasn't going to fit 6 GA wire. I was looking at it and noticed it was for 12v systems only or 40 amp max. I've got a new plug and receptacle coming for 24v. I'm wondering how it is going to do with the 6 GA wiring and new plug...will it be about the same draw on my batteries or more/less. I've taken all my electronics and put them on a separate 12v 54 Ah battery.

 

[Rabbitkil]

Hopefully you used OFC wire to run new wiring if not I would recommend stepping up to 4ga wiring if you are running standard CCA wiring. Adding in a breaker pretty close to the battery would also a be a good idea so you don't have to worry about shorts and fuses. Getting the wiring to create less of a bottleneck will make the trolling motor run better and potentially extend your battery life some. I don't believe you can add a 3rd battery the only way to do it would be add two additional batteries and wire them in series, then you will have enough voltage to put them in parallel with the original 24V battery system

 

[Crow Terminator]

I did use OFC for it. I added a 60 amp breaker. I think Tracker wires these boats for 12v trolling motors for the most part. They used 8 GA wire throughout it. My boat is 18.8 foot long but they didn't and couldn't run the wires in a straight line. I bet there's 30 feet, maybe more, of 8 GA wire from the batteries to the TM receptacle the way they had it routed. It will be interesting to see what difference performance wise, wiring it to spec will make.

 

[mike243]

I would hazard a guess that it will do better with the proper wire and connectors, you lose a little here and a little there and it adds up, longer life battery's would be the easiest way to extend run time rather than adding more batteries and weight imo.

 

[TRIGGER]

What batteries are you running?

 

[Pilchard]

What group size are your batteries? Unless your boat is a tank, a 24v system should last all day….

 

[Hduke86]

Bite the bullet and step up to a 200ah 24v lithium from Li-time. Makes life so much easier and less weight and wiring. One single 24v battery instead of 2-3 other batteries

 

[Hduke86]

Crow I've got a 100ah 24v lithium and anytime you want to try it out on the water just holler. It'll give you an idea of the comparison of how long one will last. I'm sure you could make it work for a day or two and see if 100ah would be good enough.

 

[Crow Terminator]

Mine are Group 27 Duralast Gold batteries. If I was doing like normal people fish, and only on the trolling motor to move from point A to B and or just correct the boat position, mine would easily last a full day. But I am crappie trolling crankbaits at 1.5 to 2 mph constant. That's a continuous pull of amps....and is draining them in just a few hours. The correct wiring seemed to help. We fished from 9 to 1 today and still had 11.3 volts on each battery when I checked them at home.

 

[mike243]

It would probably take 3-4 of those batteries to run a long day, went on a guided rockfish trip 1 time and it took 3-4 battery's for a full day of trolling. do you raise your big motor up? if not I would as it has a lot of drag .

 

[Pilchard]

Group 31s, if they will fit, will dramatically increase your runtime.

 

[sll]

Group 31s, if they will fit, will dramatically increase your runtime.

This.....I troll for walleye out of a heavier boat than yours (20' Phoenix) and 31 series hold up good for me. If you are going to stay with a wet cell battery and have the room to put them look into this size.

 

[Crow Terminator]

I've actually been looking hard at the 24v lithium. Actually, that exact one in the 200 Amp Hour model. I'm just weary of dropping that kind of $ on them.

There's no way to get a set of Group 31s in there. It's a struggle to get the 27s in.

 

[Hduke86]

I've actually been looking hard at the 24v lithium. Actually, that exact one in the 200 Amp Hour model. I'm just weary of dropping that kind of $ on them.

There's no way to get a set of Group 31s in there. It's a struggle to get the 27s in.

Lithium is great for steady constant voltage. It doesn't have the drop of voltage as a regular deep cell. They charged a ton faster and not to mention weigh a freakin ton less.

 

[TRIGGER]

I've actually been looking hard at the 24v lithium. Actually, that exact one in the 200 Amp Hour model. I'm just weary of dropping that kind of $ on them.

There's no way to get a set of Group 31s in there. It's a struggle to get the 27s in.

Ionic batteries have an 11 year warranty.

 

[Doecrusher]

Amazon has the timeUSB 12v 100ah on sale for 249

 

[Crow Terminator]

People are finding out just how many loop holes are in those warranties too. It sounds good up front to have a 10 or 11 yr warranty but I've saw a lot of cases where the people just ended up with a bad battery and no help. A lot of the lithiums go into sleep mode when it drops under 32 degrees and have to be reactivated/woke up. My boat isn't stored in climate controlled area and kept in my shed during the winter.

 

[Spurhunter]

People are finding out just how many loop holes are in those warranties too. It sounds good up front to have a 10 or 11 yr warranty

Before I bought my Dakota Lithiums I read the warranty closely. You are correct. The warranty is really good for 5 years. After that there isn't much to it. All the positives of lithium still made it a no brainer for me, but the 10 and 11 year warranties are somewhat misleading.

 

[Hduke86]

People are finding out just how many loop holes are in those warranties too. It sounds good up front to have a 10 or 11 yr warranty but I've saw a lot of cases where the people just ended up with a bad battery and no help. A lot of the lithiums go into sleep mode when it drops under 32 degrees and have to be reactivated/woke up. My boat isn't stored in climate controlled area and kept in my shed during the winter.

They make a "heated" version for cold climate areas. I've never looked into it though.

 

[FLTENNHUNTER1]

Parallel connected batteries increase voltage while keeping amp hours the same.

Series connected batteries increase amp hours while keeping the voltage the same.

Wire size and length add resistance to the circuit and increases voltage drop.