HELP!!!! Trolling motor problem

Hi guys!
I’m having a problem with my trolling motor or connection. Long story short, when I got the boat back from storage, I immediately hooked up the on board charger and topped off the batteries, no problems! I even turned on the motor and everything was fine, charger indicated a full charge.
Last week I had a tourney on the Croix, brought boat to my parents house and thought I’d plug in the charger just to make sure they were full, they were so I unplugged and left for the river the next morning.The next morning I went to use the motor and had no power!!! I checked the in line fuses and were fine, cleaned the terminals and still nothing. When I got home I plugged the charger in and tested the motor worked, but seemed like it was only running on one battery. I looked at the charger indicator lights and it said battery one….full charge, battery two…check connection. I don’t know what else to do!!! The motor won’t run when the charger is not plugged in I plug it in and it works again! The motot is a Co-pilot, Auto pilot 70lb Minnkota, ONE YEAR OLD. PLEASE HELP!!! I even hooked up a portable charger to battery 2 and it said check connection. I’m baffeled. Any suggestions?

Check the charge on the second battery. Check the charger connections. Sounds more like the charger is your issue, not the motor.

I’d rather have your problem. My Maxxum 101 went bad 100% this spring.

Do you think the charger is bad?? Why won’t the motor run without the charger plugged in?

Check the water levels of your batteries.

hard to diagnose from the info available. It could be a bad battery #2. You could swap battery 1 and 2 and see if you get the same result that battery 2 (in the former batter 1 location)is still the proble. You could take another battery (from you car or extra) and put it in the battery 2 spot. If it works, then it is a bad battery 2. If it doesn’t work, it could be wiring problem.

I had a wire break on the water with my Powerdrive 65 and had a hard time figuring out what was wrong. When I would jiggle the wire, the motor would come on then cut off. I took the connection apart (under the electrical tape) and one wire had come loose.

I hope that helps some. Good luck getting it back up and running.

I had the same thing happen . The fuses both looked good but tested both fuses and one was bad .

Brian, disconnect the wires from both of the batteries. Check the voltage of each battery by putting the black lead of the meter on the ground of the battery and put the red lead of the meter on the positive terminal on the same battery. Do this for both batteries. If either battery is under 12.5 volts you have just found your problem. If your two batteries are connected together in series for a 24 volt system check the cable which connects from the positive cable on one battery to the negative cable of the other battery. Set the multi meter to Ohms and check the resistance of this wire by putting one lead of the meter one end of the cable and put the other lead of the meter on the other end of the cable. Post the results and we’ll see if we can help you.

If you have your Minnkota book check the wiring diagram on page 12 or 13.

Hope this helps

Gundy

If the battery is going bad, it may indicate that it is charged when no load is attached. If it reads fine, try clicking on the motor and seeing if one or the other battery drops in voltage by any significant amount.

The other thing to check is the fuses on your charger. I had a similar problem last year, where the on board charger indicated that all was well with battery 2 at all times, but the in-line fuse was blown, so it wansn’t taking any current (my charger interprets this as a full charge).

What may be happening is that your motor is just pulling current from the charger when it’s attached, but one of the batteries is toast. Check the water levels and do ‘regular maintenance stuff’ with the batteries, and if you take it to almost any auto parts store they can wheel their load tester out and check them for you. I know that doing this has saved me from replacing a good battery at least once (voltage regulator was blown in my outboard and I kept blaming the battery).