Anotherpower.com Forum
Project Journals => User Journals => Chris Olson => Topic started by: ChrisOlson on March 24, 2012, 08:55:31 pm
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I just took my boat batteries off our big bank and getting ready to put them back in the boat:
[attachimg=1]
These batteries will have their 8th birthday in April. They survived an entire winter of being boiled at 30+ volts (wired in series) hooked up with our Surrettes and powering our place. I load tested them with my AVR (one hour test on each one) and they both test with the same specs as new on the RC (Reserve Capacity) test.
I'm finding more and more, as I work with deep cycle batteries, that the cause of early death of these things is under-charging and inactivity, not over-charging and deep cycling.
The Mercury four-cylinder survived the winter too :)
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Chris
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And now you need an new water pump impeller, they die in less than 5 seconds if you run them dry.
Dustin
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The new impeller and wear plates are laying on the workbench. The pump that's in it was shot last year and wouldn't pump any water out the pee hole unless the engine was running at 2,500 rpm or above.
Busted the reed block on the center of the crank in 2007 and lost the two center cylinders. So had to split the crankcase and put a new reed block in it. Then blew the head water jacket cover gasket in 2008 and had to replace that. 2009 blew the exhaust baffle gaskets and got water in the cylinders:
[attachimg=1]
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2010 lost the seal on the prop shaft and had to rebuild the gearcase. 2011 the water pump went to hell and just replacing that now.
Otherwise she's been pretty good and only left us stranded on the lake once each year ;D
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Chris
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As usual write up and images Chris
People might call me finicky, or maybe just lucky to never have to much trouble with boat motors. I have went through a pump every few years, but no one has ever caught me stranded on the lake. Every fall/winter I do a minor tear down the motors that I use that year and kind of do a once over. Gears, seals, pump etc are checked re lubed and readied to take out the next spring. I really hate being stranded anywhere with any kind of vehicle.
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People might call me finicky, or maybe just lucky to never have to much trouble with boat motors.
Wow, you guys sure hard on boats!
I've not had an engine problem, leak in the hull, steering dramas, hydraulics failure, fuel leak or electrical problem in 30 years.
(Haven't had a boat for 35 years either, but hey, lets not let facts get in the way of a good story!)
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Not hard so much on the boats, but the impellers are made SO cheap these days..
Seems I can get good seals but not impellers.
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That Merc gets a lot of hours on it backtrolling. I keep fixing it because it's the only one I've ever found that will idle down to where you can count the number of teeth on the flywheel with it running. It will run like that for hours on end without complaining.
Then when we get ready to move to a new spot tell my wife, "Sit down, shut up and hang on - 'cause this ain't no hayride." Crank the throttle wide open and it will launch that boat right up out of the water and up on the pad in about two seconds and it will go 40 mph.
They don't build motors like that anymore. This one was built when Mercury Marine still built them in Fon Du Lac, Wisconsin and they tested every single one at full power before it left the plant.
I got the motor jacked on the transom a bit so the cavitation plate is right on top of the pad:
[attachimg=1]
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I restored this boat a few years back and put all the new Alumacraft graphics on it. Shot it with PPG Delstar/Delthane:
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cCl_DDriJMM/SwyZkA0nUnI/AAAAAAAAAC4/kbWKE96Mi1Y/s640/HPIM1419.jpg)
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dLM5b6qfNGw/SwyZpkieRlI/AAAAAAAAADI/OZKc1ESHSFQ/s640/HPIM1424.jpg)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1vfvca6Gyvk/SwyZq9AXGOI/AAAAAAAAADM/hl3IADxqgh4/s640/HPIM1427.jpg)
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-YUHR2QjvDjg/SwyZv_y92jI/AAAAAAAAADc/DhU6Rx47x2Q/s640/HPIM1438.jpg)
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6kycw5hcv6w/SwyZxYsewvI/AAAAAAAAADg/LtnjtTUEbgM/s640/HPIM1439.jpg)
We've had a couple other boats but none that are as good as this one for all around general fishing. It's got a 25 gallon aerated livewell that will hold a 20 lb northern (never put two 20 lb northerns in the same livewell because you ain't never seen such a fight as you're about to see over who owns the livewell)**. It's got an older MinnKota 565 on it and I think I might put one of them newer 24 volt MinnKota's on it this year that has AutoPilot in it.
** You can put a couple or three 5-6 lb walleyes in there and they get along just fine. Put two big northerns in there and they will blow the cover open on the livewell and the loser of the fight will get out. Then you got a big pissed off fish flopping around in the boat that's got teeth that can take your fingers right off, and you have to subdue it by clubbin' it over the head with an oar handle. And that only works for about 10 minutes before the fish comes to and starts wreaking havoc again. Frickin' fresh water sharks......
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Chris
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This is still the best fishin' video of all time 8)
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Chris
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Hehe even better than I hoped for.
I figured he would gun it and drive the boat out from under her on that seat.
Tom
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I have a pair of 115 mercs on my 21 ft whaler, they idle on 2 cylinders, and idle down to 700 rpm. I can troll at 1.2kt on one engine, and they just sip fuel at idle and don't foul the plugs. but when I open both engines up I burn 25 gallons/hr @ 48mph
[attachimg=1]
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Dustin, that's a pretty nice boat. Them Boston Whalers are pretty much the gold standard in workhorse boats.
My wife and I went to get a new trolling motor for our boat today. The place we went to had a MinnKota 50 PowerDrive V2 with AutoPilot. But it was 12 volt and I want a 24 volt one because the 12 volt one draws 50 amps at full power. So we didn't get that.
They had some really nice Wise® Pro-series swivel seats on sale. They only had two in stock and we needed three. So we took the two they had and they ordered us one more. They're really nice comfortable seats:
[attachimg=1]
I want to upgrade the helm SONAR too. We got a Eagle Cuda 242 on the bow. And we got a Eagle StrataView 128 at the helm.
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The StrataView 128 is a better SONAR because it's more sensitive. But I like the Cuda 242 because it's got water temp display and will show the thermocline. It also displays system operating voltage of the boat's electrical system so you can keep an eye on it when running high draw units like electric trolling motors along with night time navigation and deck lighting in the boat.
But I'd like to upgrade the helm SONAR with one of them Humminbird LakeMaster ones that got GPS, 360° imaging, and you can load all the inland lake cartography in them on mini-SD cards:
There's a lot of times we'll find mid-summer walleyes hanging off the edge of dropoffs in 20-25 feet of water and they'll bite if you entice them enough. Depending on the weather and water temp sometimes they don't even move up on to the flats, or in the shallows, to feed at night because they're kind of dormant at that time of the year. It's all about presentation and knowing where the fish are to catch mid-summer walleyes on inland lakes when the surface temp is up to 75+ degrees. We usually give up and go to Lake Superior at that time of the year. Lake Superior rarely gets much above 45 degrees and you can find mid-summer walleyes on Superior at only 8-10 feet and catch them trolling with a spoon.
If we had one of these high-precision GPS/SONAR units so I could precisely position the boat over where I KNOW them fish are at - then it's all presentation and if you're good you can catch mid-summer walleyes on our inland lakes. Going to Canada isn't even a challenge because walleyes up there are like crappies - they'll bite on anything. It takes a real fisherman to catch 'em with the water temp pushing 80 degrees in mid-summer around here on our shallow lakes.
My wife and I LOVE to fish walleyes. Some days we'll catch 15-20 of 'em and keep a couple nice 19-22" fish for supper.
[attachimg=4]
Some days we'll work the good spots for hours and never get a bite because we're either 20-30 feet off where the boat should be for proper presentation, or there's no fish there at all because some other conditions changed that we can't see down there. Chasing "clouds" of baitfish on the SONAR don't work in mid-summer because the walleyes could give a crap less about chasing baitfish unless one swims right in front of their nose with a sign on it that says "eat me" :)
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Chris
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Do those fancy seats have that rocket powered eject fearure? :) I just upgraded my furuno gps32 and fcv662 fishfinder to a Humminbird 788ci hd di, I really like the down imaging sonar, it looks like a black and white tv picture of the bottom. The 50 channel GPS gets a cold fix in under a minute and tracks well, has built in maps and high definition maps are available.
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I was scared to get them Rocket Seats. My wife is actually a better fisherwoman than I am a fisherman. She has patience and I don't. Sometimes when we're working a sandbar or dropoff and we don't catch anything right away I want to reel in and move to a different spot, while she wants to work deeper or shallower because she's convinced we haven't finished fishing that spot yet. I'm afraid she might go, "OK fine, I'll send you over to the new spot but I'm going to fish this one" and hit the Eject Button :o
We looked at some of the Humminbird units yesterday but I don't know which one to get. If I can find a 24 volt MinnKota trolling motor with iPilot in it that's the first thing we need. You can load your lake map and select a place that you want to fish, then run the target area up to two miles using the Humminbird. Meanwhile you set up your iPilot to record the track that you just ran, turn around and go back to square one, shut down the outboard, put the trolling motor on auto, and it will take you precisely back over that track while you fish and the boat steers itself. If you set the speed to 1 kt, or whatever, the iPilot will automatically adjust the speed of the motor to maintain the track and speed regardless of wind and current.
We could get the 12 volt motor because that's the one all the marine outfits stock around here. But I'd have to upgrade the wiring in the boat for that motor. The wiring to the bow mount motor runs thru a conduit under the deck from the stern where the power bus is, to the plug for the bow motor. They only put #10 wire in there at the factory when the boat was built. The ends of the conduit are in such a gawd awful place that it would be dang near impossible to pull #6 wires thru that conduit.
My old MinnKota 565 foot steer motor only draws about 22 amps and it has 28 lbs of thrust at the high power setting. The PowerDrive 50 V2 has 50 lbs of thrust but it draws 50 amps at full power on 12 volt.
When I told them I wanted a 24 volt motor they looked at me like I was a weirdo and told me, "Those are for bass boats." I said, "No they ain't - they're for any boat." And then they started into the big spiel on how I can't use a 24 volt motor on a boat with a 12 volt system. I was ready to club the dude over the head. >:(
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Chris
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They only put #10 wire in there at the factory when the boat was built. The ends of the conduit are in such a gawd awful place that it would be dang near impossible to pull #6 wires thru that conduit.
If you can't pull a #6 through, could you at least pull another #10 through and parallel them?
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That could maybe be done. If I could carefully tape four strands of #10 together so it don't have no twists in it, then use the existing wires to pull the new ones thru it might work.
The conduit terminates in the bilge under the splash deck and there's barely room to get one hand in there thru the hole in the deck where the wires come up thru to the power bus. The other end terminates under the bow storage compartment and that would be the end that would have to be pulled.
I'm pretty sure I could never get #6 wire to go down thru the hole and around the corner back there in the stern. - unless I could feed the wire in thru the bilge drain plug hole in the transom while my wife pulls on the other end, but that wouldn't much fun either because it's not a straight shot from the bilge drain hole to the conduit.
I laid upside down standing on my head under the splash deck last night, shining a flashlight down in the bilge, for about fifteen minutes trying to figure out how I would accomplish that feat. I was going to pull the bilge pump out so I could see in there better, and even that's not easy to get out of there.
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Chris
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Chris;
Don't tell me you don't have a way to cut AL to make an access hole? :o
Anyway, if you get at doing it be sure to grease the cable on the end it feeds from. Like other things in a guys life when it is a tight fit you need some lube to slip it in easier! 8)
Or not.
Good luck with it.
Tom
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Oh, I got the technology and equipment to make all sorts of access holes. The problem is pluggin' 'em shut after I get done accessing.
I went to the marina today and bought a new switch panel for the boat that has dual bus feed for 24 volt marine systems:
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cFLSLNkoU6s/T3D32fbuClI/AAAAAAAAGAQ/WbXZjmqr1nI/s640/100_1539.JPG)
I talked to the service people and it turns out the salesman was full of bungus. A boat with a 24 volt system is still 12 volt. The trolling motor plug has three pins for a reason - one is ground, one is 12V to ground, the other is 24V to ground. You can plug either a 12 or 24 volt trolling motor into the same plug and either one works.
During operation one battery in the bank powers bilge pump, and livewell pump. The other powers nav, anchor and cabin lighting. And both power the 24 volt trolling motor. The bank gets unbalanced during a day of fishing. But that's why marine battery chargers have two more more channels that charge each battery in a 24 or 36 volt bank separately.
We already got a MinnKota MK210D dual channel charger for 24 volt that I bought and put in the boat a couple years ago:
[attachimg=1]
So we're all set - all I have to do is rewire the whole boat ;D
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Chris
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Well, the boat saga continues. She's getting all the upgrades - electronics, 24 volt, and new trolling motor. I had to order a 24 volt trolling motor.
The reason the deep cycles are up front of the main deck is because of a couple reasons. I altered the port timing a bit when I put the new reed block in it, and then I did some more work on the exhaust ports when I had to replace the exhaust baffle. Plus I put a stainless prop on it a few years back. It probably puts out closer to 50 hp at the prop shaft, although I've never dyno'd it. But it does turn up to 6,800 rpm and it's only supposed to run at 6,000.
The problem is that it's got too much power and it launches the boat right out of the water even with full down trim. It porpoised really bad and you couldn't even run it at full throttle.
So I moved the deep cycles up front and stow the anchor in the forward storage compartment to add weight to the front of the boat. With that change she trims out really nice and runs like a banshee. It will cavitate the prop sometimes if you crank it wide open on a launch out of the hole when the boat jumps out of the water and up on plane. But if you ease off the throttle a bit to get the prop to hook up again, then go back to wide open throttle you can bump the trim up a tiny bit to get an extra couple mph out of it. When it starts to go into a porpoise, give it a nudge of down trim and she's right and she runs.
We get a lot of rubber neckers when they see a tiller boat running up the lake at 40 mph throwing a 50 foot rooster tail. But hey, your equipment has to perform ;D
I could get a couple more mph out of it if I could get rid of that whale fin on the cavitation plate. But without that there's not enough lift on the stern even with full down trim, being the boat is stern heavy. Even with the batteries and anchor up front the boat still goes into a porpoise without it.
All the latest updates:
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Chris
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This boat wiring doesn't make sense. The boat was designed to have the batteries in the stern under the splash deck. Then the power to the trolling motor is fed thru those wires in the conduit under the deck up to the bow.
Since I had to move my batteries to the front of the main deck it makes more sense to me to re-do all this. I can drill the rivets out of the forward deck and pull the deck up. Then put another conduit under there from the batteries to the bow for the trolling motor. That way it's only 6 feet of wire from the batteries to the trolling motor, which is the heaviest electrical load in the boat.
The way it is now, there's two #2 cables that run from the trolling battery bank for 14 feet to the stern to the power bus. Then another 18 feet of #10 in that conduit to the bow for the motor. So the power to the motor is running thru 32 feet of wire.
My theory is that I can feed the power the 6 feet to the motor right from the batteries. Then use the #10's in the conduit under the deck to feed one ground and two 12 volts (off each battery in the bank) from the bow back to the stern, to the power bus, to run the rest of the lighter loads in the boat. With everything turned on in the boat (besides the trolling motor) the total amp draw is around 10 amps. #10 is plenty big enough for that.
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Chris
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If you decide to rewire your boat, you may as well just buy a different boat. Turns out none of the wire in that boat is copper. It's some sort of marine grade tinned wire with insulation that meets Coast Guard spec blah, blah, blah.
The only way the marina sells it is on a 100 foot spool - $140 for 10 gauge. And then you only get one color. If you want two colors (red and black) then it's $280.
No wonder boats are so damn expensive.
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Chris
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The only way the marina sells it is on a 100 foot spool - $140 for 10 gauge.
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No wonder boats are so damn expensive.
It's more likely because the people that run marinas think the people that run boats, are loaded.
And the people that supply to the marinas think that the marinas customers are loaded....
Make some calls, find someone else who sells the cable. There will be someone. I'd be surprised if you can't buy 4 spools from someone who doesn't think they have you reaching for your ankles, for the price of 1 from the marina.
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Make some calls, find someone else who sells the cable. There will be someone. I'd be surprised if you can't buy 4 spools from someone who doesn't think they have you reaching for your ankles, for the price of 1 from the marina.
Just did a quick search on ebuy
http://tinyurl.com/7ov4s84
Twin Core Marine Grade Tinned 6mm Wire, one black one red, in a protective outer sheath for about the same price for 30 metres (100') as one spool. 10AWG is 5.2 sq mm, so this 6 sq mm cable is fractionally heavier.
Took me longer to write this than it took to find the listing....
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Chris,
I agree, boat wire is outragiously expensive. Way over priced for what it is. It is different than "regular" house wire. It's copper that has been tinned throughout its length and double insulated with UV resistant covering.
I just use commonly available wire on my sailboat without (too many) problems. And those problems I have had can almost always be traced to a poorly protected splice or connection. The best practice I've come up with is to solder all connections, seal with 3M 4200 marine adhesive and double heat shrink. Make sure you extend the 4200 well past the joint onto good insulation. Shrink the first layer of heat shrink on the 4200 while it's still wet and hasn't set up.
The insulation on some cheaper wire will leach water through it if its constantly wet. It also hardens and cracks over time. No UV necessary. The best is silicone double insulated but it's also expensive. Use silicone dielectric grease on all exposed terminal connections. It's messy but it works.
Remember, BOAT is an acronym:
Break Out Another Thousand!
Kevin
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Some of the marine grade stuff has a coating of some kind of powder on the tinned wire making it a bugger to solder.
Wiping off the powder from all the strands makes it take solder a lot easier.
G-
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I like to buy stuff locally whenever I can to support our local businesses. They provide a lot of support and service on stuff when you need it. The service people at the marina have already been helpful in giving me wiring diagrams on how to wire it up for 24 volts so it meets all the coast guard specs. So I'll probably just spend the extra buck to get the wire from them. The wire they got is really nice wire. It's got a type of insulation that's really flexible, where the automotive primary wire I was going to use before I discovered this is really hard and stiff. You can tell just by handling it that it's high buck, high quality wire and it says Ancor Marine Grade on it.
I put dielectric grease on all the terminals on the 24 volt switch panel I installed. And there's a harness connector in there that connects the switch harness to the boat's main harness. I put dielectric grease on all the pins in that connector too. The pins in that connector looked like they're silver and they weren't corroded at all after 22 years.
I have to reconfigure the power bus in the stern for 24 volt. So I'm going to remove the old 12 volt two strip one and replace that with a new three strip 24 volt bus. The marina has a SeaSense 24 volt bus for $260 and it's a nice one with manual-reset push button breakers on all the circuits so I can get rid of the old glass fuses and stuff in there. Those automotive style fuses are a problem on marine applications too because they corrode. I've had to wiggle those sometimes to get lights to come on and stuff. So it's time to replace all that too.l
Yep - I like Kevin's acronym for BOAT. The trolling motor was $1,500. The new Humminbird electronics are $2,000. By the time I get done with this boat I'll have to Break Out Another Thousand a few times over. :o
Edit: But, on the other hand, have you priced new boats lately? A tiller boat is the only thing to have if you're serious about fishing on inland lakes. Console steer boats, of the same hull length, don't have any deck space. Alumacraft don't build the Backtroller anymore, but they got one that's similar to it - the Tournament Series, or whatever they call it now. A boat like this new, with a 40 horse Merc Chink Motor on it, and equipped like I'm equipping this one, is almost $17 Grand.
So when fishing is the favorite thing that you and your wife like to do, you can afford to Break Out Another Thousand to upgrade an older boat. If the hull don't leak, the transom is good, and she's structurally sound, it's not like it's going rust out, wear out, or the wheels fall off it like an old car.
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Chris
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Well, got everything wired up and it all tests out good.
I got some 80 VDC rated 90 amp breakers from Tom like this:
[attachimg=1]
I put one on the trolling motor battery bank - replaced the old inline marine fuse with it:
[attachimg=2]
Having a breaker on there is a lot easier to reset at 11:00 at night when you accidentally short something out on the trolling motor and the whole boat goes dead because the Main Fuse blew.
I also installed a battery selector switch so I can start the outboard from either the starting battery, or the one battery in the trolling bank that has this breaker on it. The outboard starter draws 150 amps surge and 80 amps continuous during cranking. That breaker handles starting the outboard off the trolling bank with ease, even with everything else in the boat turned on.
Works awesome - thanks Tom!
Got the Merc running after the new water pump installed. Wanted to take the boat out on the Yellow River for a run today. But it's cold - way too cold to take the boat out for a joy ride. So I ran it with the muffs on it.
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Chris
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I thought that breaker looked familliar, I sent some of those to Tom a few years ago. I only have a few hundred left :)
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I thought that breaker looked familliar, I sent some of those to Tom a few years ago. I only have a few hundred left :)
I told you they would get used!
Bet you did not know they were Marine Rated[TM] ! :D :o 8)
Tom
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Well, got to take 'er out for a joy ride on the Yellow River. The boat didn't sink. The motor didn't quit. Just have to install my new trolling motor and electronics. Then wait another month for fishing season to open :o
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Chris