Onboard battery charger question

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:04:24 GMT, "Jeff Durham"
wrote:

With
regards to my trolling motor, what happens if I hook up another battery
in parallel to my trolling motor battery? My trolling motor is 12V and by
hooking up in parallel, I still have 12V.

Nothing bad will happen--only good. You will have TWICE the amperage,
TWICE the run time.

My question has to do with how the onboard charger from one side would
charge those two batteries hooked up in parallel. Is it possible that
if one battery is not as full as the other, that the charger would "cook"
one battery too long?

If you are precautious like I am, you might want to fully charge the
batteries separately first, then hook them up in parallel, so they
will share the load and be equally discharged before charging them in
parallel.

FWIW, I have a three-bank charger (5/5/3 amp circuits), one 12 v.
trolling motor battery, and a 12 v. starter battery. The engine keeps
the starter battery full, so I have connected all 3 charger circuits
in parallel on the trolling motor battery, for the equivalent of a 13
amp charging current. It's been working fine for 5 years.


batteries hooked up to the second output of my charger. The first
output
is
hooked up only to my outboard battery.

Thanks,
Jeff