Powerdrive V2 ?

Curious if anyone has seen this before.

24V
70#
Powerdrive V2
Probably getting on 6-8 years old.

Situation.

Friday, I pounded the batteries fishing some high wind high current. Ran them to dead. So it seemed. Had it cranked to 10 and it seemed to just quit. I kinda figured that was going to happen soon. I pull the trolling motor up. Run it out of water and it has dead battery, super weak power symptoms. Ok no biggie. I was done anyway.

Friday night on the Marine charger.

Had some time to kill Saturday before my partner showed up to fish, so i decided to hook up my smart charger (one i charge my parallel batteries with) to each battery. Hook it up to one. Runs 20 minutes or so, and it says 100% done.
Hook it up to other battery and it runs about same time. 100% done.

Buddy shows up at noon we go fishing.

Drop trolling motor in water.
Hit spot lock.
Beeps and stops spot lock.
And motor is non-responsive.. no jackrabbit, no nada.

I repeat all the above… But nada.

Stow motor. Turn on motor. Prop would “flinch” and nothing.
Motor would beep. Remote turn off.

We Anchor and fish.

Antsy, 10 minutes later I check everything. Then try it again. Same thing. Dang. I’m f’d I think.

Few hours later i try it again. Boom all working. Jackrabbit, slow, spot lock, everything!! Worked Saturday and Sunday.

So, I’m thinking my on board charger is working fine and dandy. I hooked up my smart charger to a fully charged battery, on the 10A setting, and basically overcharged my batteries x2.

Do you suppose if I was at 28-30+ volts it would cause the issues i was seeing and after those settled down things worked again?

Thanks
Andy

Wonder if it might be a breaker issue. Might of popped a breaker and it finally reset itself.

Sounds like you have a loose or corroded connection. Running on 10 heated up the weak spot. Then it went spark and didn’t find a good connection again until the next day. I would redo and clean every non soldered connector on the system.

Mike W wrote:

Wonder if it might be a breaker issue. Might of popped a breaker and it finally reset itself.

They have a breaker?

Yes. Mine are on the battery. Have had one go bad. Seem to remember switching from 40s to 50s after putting the new trolling motor on. Trolling motor called for 60s but 50s worked for fraction of the price. 40s kept shutting the trolling motor down at higher speeds. They would trip and a little while later reset.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve got a breaker or even a fuse. I probably should and i know at one point I did, I just don’t remember seeing it last week when put a whole new floor in boat.

Might be worth redoing the wiring from the plug to the tm as that is a couple years old.

Ran er real hard yesterday without problem.

I don’t think heat or wiring was the cause. It is normal for me to run it hard.

I am tempted to over charge batteries again to see if i can repeat the failure.
But just as tempted to not do that!

I just couldn’t find anything online so figured I’d ask here.

Thanks gents

Pop the cover off the head. (Screws are on the underside) Inspect the wire connections in there. MK typically used a crimp connector there. Look of a loose connection. Re-do the connection if it don’t look right. (Solder it)

-J.

An update for anyone viewing in the future.
I isolated the problem.

Turns out it is a flat spot on the armature.

If it doesn’t work, I bring the trolling motor out of the water and spin the prop by hand and it’ll start running.

Research points to flat spot on armature.

I don’t know what causes that, but it is likely the problem.

Should it get worse in the future I’ll just replace the armature.

Thanks for the insight ido.
Hope this helps someone someday.

I wanted to follow up this post with the final diagnosis.

Since September the symptoms above only occurred more frequently until the motor finally quit working two weeks ago. Mind you this is a 100 days and many more hours used since the first sign of a problem.

I replaced armature, though it was in great condition. Commutator and brushes also great shape. Also, no change to motor problems with new armature and brushes.

By bypassing the main control board and applying power directly to the motor it was clear I had a main control board issue.

Installed new main control board and all problems are gone. Works like new.

I burned up a V2 power board as well running on high in strong winds one day. I instead replaced the whole control head with the Ipilot kit.