Help!! Trolloing Motor / Battery Issues

[Bison9]

Alright all, my trolling motor / battery woes continue. Here is my issue: I just replcaed two Mega Tron batteries because I thought they were shot and then I spent a pretty penny and went with two Optima D3M baterries to power my trolling motor. I just got back from Devils and I thought I had run the batteries low from the trolling motor use. So, I just went and put my little 1.5 amp trickle charger on one of the batteries and it says "Trouble." This is exactly what happened to my Mega Tron batteries. What's going on? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I just brought my 12 amp charger up and it appears that the battery is initially taking a charge. How can I tell if the battery is shot? And also, my trolling motor is about a 10 year old motor guide. Is there a chance that the trolling motor is killing my batteries? Any ideas would be hugely appreciated.

Also, I'm new to all of this battery charging stuff really. What kind of a tool do I need to get in order to tell the amount of charge currently on the battery? Again, thanks for any and all help on this!

[mnfishman]

When you hooked up your trickle charger did you disconnect all the cables from the battery after it came back with a trouble? You could disconnect the cables to see if it still has trouble on it. That would isolate the trolling motor and cables from the equation. If it doesn't show trouble then connect the cables and disconnect the trolling motor and see what happens.

If you don't have one already get yourself a cheap volt meter. They are priceless when trying to trouble shoot electrical issues.

[eurolarva]

You really should not use a trickle charger to charge a dead or low trolling motor. YOu want to use a minimum of a 10 amp charge. I have a 714 CCA deep cell that takes close to 7 hours to recharge when I run it hard on my trolling motor. At a 2 amp charge that same battery would take35 hours to charge . To avoid battery damage you want to charge them as soon as possible after you are done using them.