On board Charger help….

Can anyone tell me what guage wire is usually used when running to your battery. Going to be doing some fishing through pvc pipe tonight.

Were you reading my mind?

My charger should be here this week and I was looking up the same info. I think 8 gauge but not sure.

I was going through today’s topics from top down and see you had a battery question too.

Check these out as well for other advice:

Charger question (I ordered a MinnKota from JollyAnn)

http://www.idofishing.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=ftlgeneral&Number=1264227&Forum=f34&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=1264227&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=23979&daterange=1&newerval=2&newertype=w&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post1264227

Battery question

http://www.idofishing.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=ftlgeneral&Number=1263751&Forum=f34&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=1263751&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=23979&daterange=1&newerval=2&newertype=w&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post1263751

I was looking around and a few forums they said it depends on how far you are running the wire. One forum a guy said if you run more than 10 feet of wire you should use 4 gauge. I used 8 gauge on most of my boat. I have about 6 foot of wiring for my trolling motor. Wire is a marine grade 8 gauge. Seem to work good for me. Good luck on what you do!!!

It depends on how big your charger is. My two bank charger is rated at 5 amps per bank. The MOST current ever flowing between the charger and the battery would be 5 amps. I can’t imagine why anyone would think you would need 4 gauge wire to carry 5 amps! I extended the cables on my charger with #12 wire (as recommended by Minnkota) and it works fine. BTW #12 wire is much less expensive than #4 wire…

Rootski

I used the
Minn Kota Charger Output Extension Cable MK-EC-15
It has all the fuses you need to protect for catastrophic failure ( as in burning you boat down from a short )
and the heavier marine grade casing.
I used a terminal block so that I can run one bank from my
MK-220D
and the
MK-2 DC using one set of wires to connect the starting battery.
The other bank on the MK-220D charges the Trolling Motor batteries.
Ran a whole week on spot lock at Kab with this setup
using the MK-2 DC which is wired one bank to each TM battery.

Quote:

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It depends on how big your charger is. My two bank charger is rated at 5 amps per bank. The MOST current ever flowing between the charger and the battery would be 5 amps. I can’t imagine why anyone would think you would need 4 gauge wire to carry 5 amps! I extended the cables on my charger with #12 wire (as recommended by Minnkota) and it works fine. BTW #12 wire is much less expensive than #4 wire…

Rootski

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If running to the back of the boat no smaller then #10 awg. In this case we are concerned with amps and voltage drop.

http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop-calculator.html

Using this calculator #10 at 5 amps and 25ft length = 11.75 volts. (11.6 using # 12 wire)

Not the same case….your charger will be providing much more than 12 volts or your battery will never charge. It doesn’t matter if you lose a quarter of a volt when you’re starting off with 14.4 volts or 14.6 volts or whatever. And you probably won’t have the full 5 amps flowing unless you really killed your battery completely dead. The Minnkota manual for the on board charger I just bought recommends #12 wire, and it’s been working fine for me for months now. I extended the leads on both channels about 6 or 8 feet to reach the batteries.

Rootski

Boat is officially fixed, happened to be the charger and not the wires. Took back my Cabelas charger on warranty and got a Minnkota, it’s working like a charm. South Dakota here I come!!!