3 bank or 4 bank charger??? Need help please.

[FLO1919]

Hey folks. Wanted to know if I need to charge my cranking battery or not? I have been hearing conflicting views from various people. I have 36 volt trolling motor with 3 batteries for it. Then, i also have my cranking battery. The shop who put it in told me I shouldn't be charging my cranking battery from the charger, so I let them put in a 3 bank charger when I was considering a 4 bank.

Last weekend, I was out on Ontario in 440 fow and needed to head in fast (storm brewing)... turn my key for my main motor and... nothin.

It was a long ride in on the kicker. I had my graph and live wells on for about 5 hours before the main died.

I was really discouraged. This is not good for various reasons. Any thoughts?

[darnet]

Nothing should be drawing from your starting battery. All your electronics and live wells or whatever should draw from your house bank

[K Gonefishin]

In my Ranger walleye rig I have 4 batteries , 3 for my 36V Terrova 101 bow mount and a dedicated cranking battery and Ranger ships and sells there boats both bass and walleye boats with a 4 bank charger (if ordered with 4) hooked to all 4 batteries. Lund, Starcraft, Skeeter, Crestliner, Warrior, all of them do and almost every walleye and bass guy I know set up there boat this way if they didn't buy there boat this way.

In my opinion this is the only way to do it. I do have other stuff hooked up to my main battery as well and I've yet to go dead in the water even after 16 hours on the water you have to keep everything topped off and charged this is the point of a 3 or 4 bank charge to keep them all topped off all the time.

I highly recommend you get a 4 bank charger and hook all 4 batteries to it and keep all 4 charged and topped off all the time. I often times don't do allot of running and fish near shore and don't use my kicker at all (run bow mount slow trolling for eyes) so my main battery doesn't get charged on the water so therefore need to keep it charged all the time.

To be honost I have no idea why you wouldn't want to hook it to your charger, if you have an I/O your trolling with and you run it all the time I could MAYBE see or a full inboard an outboard you troll with all day but you said you have a kicker motor you troll with like I do so your main engine isn't charging anything while your fishing.

Hope this helps.

Hook up and charge em man.