Opinions of trolling motor setup

[BassmanCan]

Hi - new member here - great site and amazing people sharing all their knowledge.

I would like some opinions on the trolling motor setup in my new to me Princecraft.

The boat has a Minkota Edge 12V trolling motor - works great. former owner had the two onboard trolling batteries hooked up in parallel. The boat has 2 sets of wires - one for each battery and I assume I could rig a switch to change from one to the other if I were to wire them separately.

Is there any advantage in have them separate or in parallel. The boat has a switch at the front that allows you to choose to display the charge of either, but I don't think this allows for switching between the two batteries thought - I need to investigate this before I change the way they are connected.

Thanks!
J

 

[ondarvr]

You will get the same run time either way, so from that angle it doesn't really make a difference, just like two small gas tanks or one big one.

​Although the total life span of the batteries may be longer when connected because you may not be running one down completely and then switching to the other one, the more you drain the battery, the shorter its life will be. Unless you run until both are drained each will only see 50% of the discharge compared to one run by itself.