Battery Contacts

I decided to take the weekend off from fishing and did some maintenance.

My battery died last week after a night of pulling lobsters. Thankfully, the whining of my bait pump due to low voltage woke me up. Man, I would have been ticked if I woke up to 14 dead lobsters! I somehow manage to drain my house bank ( 4 Trojan 6v) overnight. No problem, switch on the starter battery and I am good to go...wrong, my starter battery is also very low. Out come the generator and I am good to go barely... I was able to start my engine but the volt meter is telling me something is not right.

I made some changes to my charging system earlier in the season. I previously have problems with the isolator where my alternator go to and it has 2 outlets so both battery banks are charged so I bi-pass it to have my alternator go straight to my house banks via the starter. The switch between the 2 banks when on will charge both. Here is where my problems begins...The possitive connector for my house bank became loose therefore gets really heated and melted away. When this happens, nothing gets charged because the house bank is first in the series.

Moral of the story...Check your battery connections and check them often! Use locking washers! I am now looking into going back to my old charging system where both banks will get charged independently to prevent this from happening again. I had the 4 trojan 6v checked and they are pretty much toast. I decided to replace them 2 trojan 6v instead of 4 to save weight and at $140 each, it made that decision easier. Now I can take the $280 I save to go see my
Chiropractor. These batteries are heavy and they do not come out or in straight to the battery box on my boat.