Picking up a battery.

[SportPhish31]

I'm pretty new to owning a boat so I have a lot of questions if y'all haven't noticed yet. Anyways when I went to go buy my boat they battery was dead so I pulled my battery out of my car and dropped it in. I turn the key and nothing. The outdrive hydraulics worked fine though. Is this normal? I didn't hook it up that well idk if that effect much. What type of battery would my 17' searay Seville need also?

 

[impatico]

Re: Picking up a battery.

you may missed a wire, or it wasn't a good enough connection.

what happened when you tried to start? any clicks?

as for what battery to buy, what electronics would be running off this battery? I am a huge Optima fan, the shortest one has lasted for me was 10ish years, and they won't break down from vibrations

 

[LippCJ7]

Re: Picking up a battery.

One of the things we do as men is try to cut corners, the problem is when you do that with electricity those corners can cause issues, the first thing I would do is make sure you have made good connections, without the connections being solid the electricity cannot flow properly and can cause the very issues you are seeing.

 

[cpubud]

Re: Picking up a battery.

was the safty lanyard inplace ?

 

[SportPhish31]

Re: Picking up a battery.

Im prolly gonna put in LEDs but that's no issue really. I actually don't know if it even has a safety lanyard. Its a 86 searay. What type I've battery should I get? Like voltage and stuff?

 

[5150abf]

Re: Picking up a battery.

The simple answer is the biggest one you can afford, you can't get too big of a battery but you can get one that is too small and make sure it is a marine battery, they are built a bit heavier than a car battery because boats take such a beating.

If you are going to eventually run a stereo, livewells ect ect a 2 battery system is highly reccomended, you want a house battery to run the boat and a starting battery to get the engine going, this way if you kill the house battery you can still get home, I personnaly run 3, 2 house and a starter but I night fish so I run lights all night , pump water in and out of the livewell and have a stereo and a 55 lb troller.

 

[tpenfield]

Re: Picking up a battery.

I'm pretty new to owning a boat so I have a lot of questions if y'all haven't noticed yet. Anyways when I went to go buy my boat they battery was dead so I pulled my battery out of my car and dropped it in. I turn the key and nothing. The outdrive hydraulics worked fine though. Is this normal? I didn't hook it up that well idk if that effect much. What type of battery would my 17' searay Seville need also?

It is a bit hard to tell based on not having quite enough information about the history of the boat . . .Like did it work prior to when you bought it, have you actually seem it running etc.?

Anyway, nothing 'overly' special about the batteries and electrical systems of a boat versus a car, in that an automotive battery should be able to start the engine, etc. There are special 'marine' batteries and that is what you want to use for the boat on a permanent basis.

However, your trials so far indicate an issue with the starter and/or related components. You will probably have to trace through things, and check the things that have been mentioned so far. That fact that other systems work is a good sign.

If you have your Radio Shack multi-meter handy, that would be helpful. You can also download the manual for your engine . . . the bulk of the electrical system in boats is based on the engine (Mercruiser, Volvo-Penta, etc) rather than the boat manufacturer.