trolling motor wiring question

[Timberghost]

today i was looking at my trolling motor wiring in the front of my boat, i have 2 batteries and i have 2 red(hot) and 2 black(ground) wires up front.only 1 set of wires are hooked up. should both reds and both blacks be tied together? the way im seeing it is im only getting power from 1 of my batteries. i just wanted to make sure with someone who knows before i put both hots together and both grounds together, is the how it should be hook up to my 12v trolling motor?? thanks Gary

 

[TOMMY 20RXD]

12 OR 24 VOLTS TM

 

[derek81]

Is it a 12v motor?

 

[Timberghost]

yea its just a 12v trolling motor,it only had 1 hot and 1 ground from battery #1 hooked up, the batteries are not wired together or nothing

 

[fischnrod]

It is right like it is, more than one battery probably wouldn't be good for a 12 volt trolling motor unless you are going to make sure all wiring is in parrallel from the batteries to the motor.

 

[Timberghost]

so having 2 batteries with a 12v trolling motor is just a waste? what do you mean by batteries running paralle? both hots and both grounds run straight from the batteries to the trolling motor, all other accesories run off the cranking battery i think

 

[stratos21xl]

running two 12 volt batteries in parallel will double the amperage of the batteries but you will retain 12 volts. For example...say you have two 12 volt batteries that are 200 amp hour batteries, if you wire them parallel (red to red and black to black) this will give you 400 amp hours but you will still have 12 volts.

If you take the same two batteries and wire them in series, it will double the voltage to 24 volts but you will only have 200 amp hour rating.

Confused yet? emoLaugh

 

[Timberghost]

lol..naaa my bullet boat was wired the way your talking about. i was only wondering wouldnt it be useless to have 2 batteries if only 1 was running the trolling motor? wouldnt i get more trolling time if both batteries were hooked up?

 

[stratos21xl]

yep you should, the only drawback is it could possibly damage the internal switch in the trolling motor due to the higher amperage, I have also seen the wires running from the back of the boat to the trolling motor get hot because they are not heavy enough gauge to carry that type of current. I had an older Bullet years ago that if you ran the trolling motor on high for more than a couple minutes it would throw the circuit breaker. I traced down the wires and they were 10 gauge from front to back. I pulled them out and put in 6 gauge wire and put new connectors and circuit breakers on and never had another issue.

 

[Timberghost]

do they make any type of selector switch or something that i could use # 1 battery then when it was low switch over to battery # 2 ??