Minnkota onboard charger- giving it a 2nd life?

Hi All
OK, so my 3 YO MinnKota 212 2 bank onboard charger took a dump; one of the outputs failed. (just out of warranty, figures. ) The other output seems to be working ok.
Question I have is, rather than throw the unit out, any reason why I couldn’t use it as a single output maintainer for my 4 wheeler, lawn mower or other toys over the winter? I do it with other chargers I have, (that, and I could use another one.)
I would isolate the bad output connections and ignore the fault light. What have I got to loose?

Anyone else done this?

Don

I’m doing this. I’ve got a 4 bank minnkota that took a crap as well. Actually 2 of them. One was replaced under warranty for the same thing. I can’t remember if I clipped the cables or if I just let them hang.

I bought a NOCO Genius charger and am very very happy with it. You can connect ring terminals to your battery and it goes to a connector that you connect directly to the charger. Pretty slick.

Maybe use it as a single charger, but I wouldn’t trust it as a maintainer to not go full POS and ending up killing the battery it’s supposed to be maintaining.

Have you called Minn-Kota?

They will probably give you a solid discount on a new one.

Dumb question, but have you checked the fuses on the bad lead?

Have you tried the bad lead on a different battery?

B-man-I did the full troubleshooting routine; fuses, checked voltage on each output, checked to make sure the suspect battery was good, swapped leads with other battery, (problem stayed with bad output side), etc…

I did call MinnKota, their answer was pretty much, “That’s too bad, but we can’t help you”

BassnDan- good point, I’ll keep an eye on it when I start using it in this manner.

Why isn’t anything built to last any longer now days?!

Thanks for the info guys.
Don