24 volt battery systems

I was wondering what is the best way to charge a 24 volt system for your trolling motor. Do I need a special 24 volt charger or can I get by with a 12 volt charger? Do I just hook it up to one battery and have it trickle to the other battery. The only reason I ask is that my trolling motor died over the weekend. When I left in the morning the battry charger said it was full. When I got home one battery was completely dead and the other one had little charge on it.

You need to charge both batteries. Charging one will not charge the other. I used to hook a 24 volt charger to a trolling motor plug and charger the batteries back though the system. I now have an onboard charger which is hooked to both battiers. If you use a 12 volt charger, you will have to charge each battery one at a time.

When I went to a 24v system I broke down and bought a Guest, 3 bank on-board charger. Best money I ever spent! Whenever the boat’s in the garage the charger stays plugged in. No dead batteries and better yet, no boiled-out batteries. You’ll wonder how you ever got by without one. Cabela’s has ’em.

Most definetly do the on board charger. This spring i got my first 24volt trolling motor and I included the on board charger with it . Just plug it in and Wa~La !!

I’d have to agree that an on board charger is the only way to go. Just plug it in and forget it.

I don’t know exactly how this was set up, but before I got my onboard charger, I could charge both trolling batteries at the same time by hooking up my 12V deep cycle charger to a trolling motor plug and plug it in where the trolling motor plug went. It worked fine. The problem I had with it though was I never knew for sure how long to set the timer. Ussually I’d have to replace the batteries every other year because now I suspect I was either not putting enough charge into them or I was putting too much in. Since I went with an onboard charger, I’m well into my 4th year on the same set of batteries.

I forgot to mention that the best part of an on board charger is that they will pay for themselves. They charge at a higher rate untill fully charged and then drop back to a trickle charge to maintain a charge. Over or undercharging is hard on batteries, with an automotive type charger you are lucky if you don’t do one or the other. Also most automotive type chargers will charge a deep cycle battery at too high of a rate.

Another thing is if the trolling moter is a 12 – 24 volt system they don’t take equal juice from both batteries. If your using the charge back system the are charged back in the same percentages that they were drawn from. Found this out on my old boat, so when I bought a new one I put just a 24 volt trolling motor on this one.

Bigweav, If you have the right system, which I did on my old alumacraft phantom with a 12-24 minnkota, you can draw 12 volts from both batteries at the same time. Flip a switch on the bow control panel and the foot control base, and it’s drawing from both batteries in the 12v position, flip the switches again and your drawing from both in the 24v position.I had this all checked by a qualified electrical tech because I needed to know what position the switches needed to be in. If it’s not done right, you’ll be drawing 12 volts from only one battery when set in the 12V position, thus drawing your batteries down unevenly.

Hey Bud, Get a Guest On-Board Charger for your boat. Its great and charges both batteries at once and quicker. You will love it! Bill and Nate

Heres a little tip that has made my life alot easier. I keep my boat at a marina on the mississippi, and I don’t have the ability to use a charger to charge the trolling motor batteries. Last year I installed a ProXtra II in the boat. This takes the charge from the OBs alternater and puts it into the trolling batteries. With the exception of the 2 or 3 times I brought it home to clean the boat, I never charged the batteries once. 90% of the time I had full charge in the batteries, occasionally it would drop to the 75% charge range but very rarely. This item sells for a little over $100.00 and if you don’t have an onboard charger it can make life alot easier as well as extend your time on the water!

I have used on board chargers for a while now and they work great, but I bought a Trolling Thunder battery and it eats on board chargers for lunch! I got tired of in stalling them only to have them zapped after 2 or 3 uses. Great battery but could not find a charger that could handle them.