12/24 volt trolling motor wiring HELP!!!

[idn713]

Hey guys I am no electrician but let me show you my problems via pictures so you can better understand my issues

you can see here I am wiring up a system for my motorguide Brute 67

here is the foot pedal with the 12/24 volt selection

now you can see from these pics that I have the batteries wired in series with the jumper running from one battery to the other, now here is the confusing part.I am working with a four prong outlet and it has four wires running to the back. So by wiring the batteries in series I am effectively not using these two cables.

these are the cables. So these cables are colored orange and white while I have the main black and red cables wired to the batteries.

So here you can see the four wires come to the back of the four prong female outlet. They are all there but the black is hidden behind the red a little bit and the smaller wires run to other gauges up front but they are irrelevant. So now its apparent that the orange and white are attached for some reason.

Now you can see here with the batteries wired up with the red and black cable and in series it is giving out alot of juice. My meter up front cant go any higher and would seem to indicate that 24v are indeed being produced.

So here is the male four prong plug. Anyway now that I know I have juice up front I plug the motor in and press the pedal and I get nothing! I have no clue why I am getting nothing and I think it might have something to do with the nonuse of the white and orange wires. Please help!

[Shellback]

I don't believe you should use the extra wire for series. Red and black is one battery, and orange and white are the other battery. This allows you to pickup 12v only at the plug to use for acc. The 2 batteries power is combined in the foot pedal to provide 24v to the motor. Here's a copy and paste from another site. Could someone have possibly used a white wire instead of a second black wire which this post states you should have?

Let's try to clear this up. 12V motors typically use a single 12V battery and have two wires. POS & NEG goint to the motor. No confusion so far I hope. Some folks use two twelve volt batteries wired POS to POS and NEG to NEG (called parallel wiring) to provide extra capacity. Paralleling two batteries still provides only 12Volts but the amp/hour capacity is doubled. Hence longer run time. 24volt only motors require two 12v batteries wired in SERIES (POS on Bat #1 goes through a fuse or breaker to the motor. NEG on BAT #1 goes to POS on BAT #2. NEG on Bat #2 goes to neg on the motor. 24V only motors will have just two wires. 12/24V motors is where this gets confusing since these motors can have three or four wires. Three wire systems have two red (or a red and an orange) and a third black wire. This is also true for four wire motors but there will be two black wires. Chances are your motor will be wired as JD indicated in his last post. You would wire the batteries in series (as for 24V operation) as I indicated above. But the second red (or orange) wire from the motor connects to the POS terminal on BAT #2. The switch on the motor then selects which wire will deliver power to the motor. Red = 24V and the other red (or orange) delivers 12V depending on which way the switch is set. You do need to verify this for your motor however as my first post in this thread indicates another way of doing this but the two methods are not interchangeable.

[Shellback]

Here's another link with a picture. Does this make any sense, and are their labels for each post on the back of the socket?

http://www.bbcboards.net/zerothread?cmd=print&id=400928

[idn713]

Well I was assuming the white wire is simply a different coloring scheme indicating that the wire was a negative. Anyway I tried running the wires to the battery as you suggested (just two connects to each battery) but that did not work. So I will try running the Orange to the pos post of battery 2 in the series but what then would I do with the white wire?

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[Shellback]

Here ya go. http://forums.iboats.com/showthread.php?t=67177

In your case, red to #1 battery positive, orange to #2 battery positive, black to negative #1, and a jumper between the 2 batteries negative terminals.

I hope when you originally wired it in series, it didn't fry something.

[idn713]

K sweet I will give that a shot. No I don't think it did cause the motor ran on a 12v before I wanted to go to the 12/24

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[idn713]

So I wired it according to shellbacks specifications and I got the 12v part of the motor running but I still couldn't get the 24 side running. Well I took the volt meter to the batteries and it turns out that they are only putting out about eight volts each and 16v in series. So I check the output at the outlet and the prongs responsible for the 12v side of the motor is putting out around 9 so close enough to get the 12v part running, but the 24 volt prongs that pull from the series which is putting out 16v at the prongs, so I am assuming that is way to low to get the 24v running. Anyway I freshly charged these batteries so it wasnt that. But they are old batteries and I am assuming they were not correctly maintained before I got the boat. So is it time for new batteries?

[Shellback]

If you charged them and they are only at 8 volts, checking directly to the battery, they are shot!

[idn713]

Well I am bringing this back to life because I cant get this figured out. I bought some nice new batteries and made the series connection and check everything with a voltmeter. What I found is that I am getting 24 volts perfectly up to the female receptacle and the motor runs just fine on the 12v setting. But then as I am feeling confident, I switch it from 12 to the 24 setting and I get nothing. I know for a fact I have enough juice running to the outlet to power the 24v side of things and the 12v setting works perfectly. So is something wrong in the foot pedal of the motor or with the selector switch? Cause to me the problem seems to be from the male receptacle to the foot pedal. Please help!

[Richard]

idn713,

My boat was wired like yours and when I switched to a 24 volt system I had to change a few things. The boat war wire for batteries in parrallel (12 volts) to the motor. This wiring was done through the male side of the plug. I had a toought time figuring it out like you so I opened the plug to find junpers installed between the wires from the batteries making it in parrellel. I figured out which wires needed to be powered for 24 volt set up and changed the jumper configuration. I confirmed this with my volt meter before sending power to the motor and frying something.

I hope this helps.

[idn713]

So your saying that my problem could be the male end of the plug? Cause I just checked my female end of the plug and it is indeed receiving both 12 and 24 volts. This morning I tried the motor again on the 24 v setting and I heard a faint clicking and then smelled a wisper of smoke which can't be good. I was thinking perhaps it was a selector switch issue or maybe I should just update the male and female plugs as they are pretty old.

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[idn713]

Hey guys so I think I have isolated the problem. The outlet and the plug are def not the problem. However I was testing the power cables that run to the foot pedal and I found that the selector switch when switched to the 12v setting allowed 12v to flow to the power button and I confirmed this with the voltmeter. I then flipped the selector switch to the 24v setting and I tested the wires to the power button and got a dead reading. So I am assuming the burnout I heard this morning was the toggle switch for the 24v setting. So did I burn the selector?

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