Re: onboard charger
I 've recently had a problem with a MinnKota automatic charger which would not shut off after what I considered a reasonable amount of time. Didn't really sove the problem, but got some useful info from the MinnKota site as to determining charge state as folows:<br /><br />"I would recommend taking a reading with your volt meter of the battery<br />charger hooked up to a battery and charging. The shutdown level is 14.8<br />volts. If the charger on a battery does not reach that charging rate,<br />it will not shut down. That can indicate a battery that is not reaching<br />a full state of charge."<br /><br />What was happening was that whne I hooked the charger to the starting battery, which is kept charges by the alternator, the charger would run for about a minute or so and the "Charge complete" light would come on. If I hooked it to the trolling battery, the light never came on.<br /><br />I followed the quoted instructions on the starting battery. It tested about 12.5 volts when I started the charger, climbed to 14.8 in about a minute, then at 14.82, the light came on. On the other battery, it climbed past 14.8 to almost 14.9 before I finally shut the charger off whitout the light ever having come on. In a subsequent e-mail, the guy at minnkota concluded that there must be something wrong with the charger and recommended sending it to Schauer, the mfg. I'll probably just replace it.<br /><br />In short, use a volt meter WHILE charging and see if your battery is getting to 14.8 volts. If not the battery may be bad. If your charger is an automatic and it's going much beyond 14.8, you're probably cooking the battery.
