minn kota problems

[dcralston]

With the big lake slowing down in june we have been doing a little inland lake fishing this month. We went out saturday and ran the trollining motor for almost 8 hours with no problem. Went back out monday and while moving up a weedbed we lost power to the trolling motor. We checked the fuse (it is a inline glass tube style) and it had completly exploded:eek:! We replaced it and went back at it. About an hour later we lost power so checked the fuse and once again the glass fuse had completly exploded and now the rubber housing had melted and started to burn!:eek:

Any ideas about what would cause this or what i can do to prevent it from happening again?

Thanks

Dave

Edited July 1, 2009 by dcralston
.

[anthonyyost]

Most likely somewhere in youre wiring you have a short, bare wires touching each other, or shorting out on the boat. You will have to inspect it until you find the source.

[1mainiac]

Low voltage would be my guess without using my meter to do some research. To put it in simplest terms your trolling motor or nearly any electrical load is using watts more watts more power. Watts is volts times amps so as voltage decreases ampreage increases or power is reduced. The end result is heat is produced unless you have a really huge battery bank the 8 hour troll likely damaged your battery system. I ran my 18ft Starcraft in on my Minn Kota a few years back when my lower unit seized up it took over 6 hours to get back to the dock using 2 group 27 deep cycle batteries and a 55lb thrust Minn Kota. Both batteries were destroyed they would still charge up to correct voltage but when I ran my battery analzer on them they tested at around 15 amp hours each instead of the 115 amp hour they are rated for. Thankfully they were under warranty. Depending on a few factors your trolling battery is dead at around 10.5 volts and needs to be recharged your trolling motor will only slow down at this voltage and will continue to run down to nearly zero volts reduceing power as it goes down. Take the amp hour rating of your battery and divide it by the amp draw of your motor and that will tell you what the max run time is in hours IE a average group 24 is around 95 to 105 amp hour battery and if your trolling motor is using 20 amps you have about 5 hours of useable time if you use a rough conversion I have used for years a 55lb thrust motor is about 1hp give or take this is a little over 700 watts at full power which on a fully charged battery at 13.2v is 53 amps or about 2 hours run time. The battery will continue to put out voltage and the motor will continue to run but you are now occuring damage to the system.