In my old pontoon, the cranking battery was only used to start the motor. I had lights, cig lighter port, radio, etc wired to a seperate deep cycle battery. In my current boat, everything is wired to the cranking battery, except i have 2 trolling motor batteries for the trolling motor up front and that's it.
I'd like to add a deep cycle battery for the lights, depth/fish finders, radio, livewell, etc, and have the cranking battery only used for cranking. All accessory wires have circle connectors on the ends. Is it a good/bad idea to just bolt them onto a 4 gauge battery cable and connect them to a deep cycle battery, or maybe even to the trolling batteries? i'm just trying to find the best way to be able to run my accessories for a hours at a time w/o the fear of killing the cranking battery. Right now i just carry a spare cranking battery and some jumper cables, but that's getting really old.
Pics are current boat and wiring (what a mess). In order to even add another battery there i'd have to extend the wiring to get them out of the way to make room for an extra battery...
I'd like to add a deep cycle battery for the lights, depth/fish finders, radio, livewell, etc, and have the cranking battery only used for cranking. All accessory wires have circle connectors on the ends. Is it a good/bad idea to just bolt them onto a 4 gauge battery cable and connect them to a deep cycle battery, or maybe even to the trolling batteries? i'm just trying to find the best way to be able to run my accessories for a hours at a time w/o the fear of killing the cranking battery. Right now i just carry a spare cranking battery and some jumper cables, but that's getting really old.
Pics are current boat and wiring (what a mess). In order to even add another battery there i'd have to extend the wiring to get them out of the way to make room for an extra battery...
