Buying a used boat? Here's a tip, that I learned the hard way.

[Polaris425]

I've been having problems with one of my batteries not charging:

But here's the whole story, I'll back up to day of purchase.

When I went to test the TM it didn't work. I mentioned it & the previous owner said "well, I just put two new batteries in it & I could have hooked it up wrong."

Now here's where I'm thinking, yeah you should have labeled them......

So we open her up & sure enough TM cables aren't hooked up correctly. So we change them, leaving everything else the same as he was "sure that he didn't mix anything else up."

Well, even though I fished all spring and summer, I never really taxed the batteries. I fish normally calm waters & usually fish with the current not against it. So, I never really put much load on the TM batteries. Thus, they never really Needed much charge when I got home.

However when I fished wheeler in October I really put a whoopin on them. And the back battery didn't charge at all that night. That was the last trip I made for a while so I didn't get right on trying to fix the issue. When I got home I charged the batteries on a manual charger, so both had a good full charge, so back to fishing calm waters & no real issues. Until this last weekend I put a decent strain on them again, and remembered I needed to check this out.

So at several suggestions  from forum friends I decided to check for fuses. Didn't see any inline fuses on this model, so I decided to take Someone else's advice and swap the leads from the charger around  and see if the battery that charged & one that didn't swapped as well.

So I start chasing down the leads and guess.........what.........I........found........

Yep. You've probably already guessed. BOTH sets of leads from the charger, hooked to the front battery. SO. that would be why it was charging and the back one wasn't. But since I had never taxed them, the back battery was able to hold a good charge by pulling the little it needed from the front battery. Until I really pulled them down that day.

So, I unhooked one set, placed on the other battery, and both are charging.

Moral of the story, even if the PO says he hooked everything up right, dont believe them.

[Mike Cork]

Great reminder.

After purchasing a used boat that you don't know the history on (IE it was a good friends boat), it's wise to spend some time looking over connections and wiring to prevent these kinds of problems