Battery Issue help

[jigstick]

Battery Issue help

Got to the launch yesterday and one of my batteries appeared to be dead.

 

I have 2 batteries.  A cranking battery, and a deep cycle battery.  Wired to a PERKO switch.  

 

Battery 1 is the cranking battery.  Battery 2 is my deep cycle.  all of my electronics and starter are fed off the "BOTH" terminal on the PERKO.

 

I flipped to my cranking battery and nothing worked on the boat.  No blower, starter, sonar, etc.  I flipped to deep cycle and got the boat running.  I switched the PERKO to the "BOTH" position to try and charge the one battery that appeared dead.  Trolled all day, 10 hours.  ON the way back in i decided to flip back to the "problem" battery to make sure it charged.  As soon as I did, I lost all of the electronics again.  I went back to the working battery and got off the lake.

 

I pulled the problem battery from the boat and stuck a volt meter on it.  its reading 12.26.  Now I'm not sure WTF is going on.  The fluid inside the Interstate Battery is above the electrodes.  The battery is maybe 4 years old.

 

Is my battery bad?  or did something go wrong inside my PERKO switch?

Edited July 31, 2017 by jigstick

[quality time]

Fully charged you should be over 13 volts. When charging it would be over 14 volts. You might have a shorted cell. or bad connection in the battery switch. The best way to check the battery is take it to a shop that has a load tester.   Wes

[jimmac]

12.26 would indicate you had about 50-55 percent charge in that battery.

Sent from my SM-S766C using Lake Ontario United mobile app

[jigstick]

So I just took the battery to autozone. Their tester read 12.25. And tested "good battery" on their machine. Wtf. How would I have "shorted" the battery?  I think the battery is about 4 years old

[Fishnut]

I'd bet you have a bad or corroded switch. Swap battery's and see what happens.


Sent from my iPad using Lake Ontario United

[jigstick]

So I think I "may" know the problem is.  When I store my boat I disconnect the ground wires from both batteries.  When I got the boat out of storage this year I remember putting the ground wires back on both batteries.  But heres the catch

 

On the battery giving me problems I only hooked up one ground wire.  Which I think goes to a fuse box up by my dash.  Im thinking I forgot to attach the ground wire that connects this battery to the ground on the other battery.

 

SO If I forgot to attach the ground wire, I'm guessing it would cause anything connected to that battery to not work?  The fuse panel that is connected to this battery has its + and - hooked up.  I would think those electronics should still work...even if the battery itself isn't grounded to the engine???

[quality time]

Well its good it's not a shorted cell. Often shorted cells happen in the winter when a battery has low charge and it freezes.

[Xxx]

Being in the starter & alt Buisness for well over 20 years, your battery is fine. At rest a battery will settle in at 12.3 volts depending on the amperage or the settings on your charger it will put in as little as 12.6 this would be a 2 amp setting all the way up to 16 volts this would be start engine position. Farm and marine "older types" regulators were set at 13.8 this was for continuous use long running times with little draw. Then as we decided to add more goodies the auto companies went to 14.2 and ford stayed at just under 15volts where at 15.2 volts or higher will boil the acid in the batteries causing a rotten egg smell. I'm willing to bet that A you forgot to hook the ground wire that activates the fuse panel along with the ground to the block. Or the Perko switch has a bad connection from battery (A or B). I've just helped a fellow that ran a wire from one ground to the other ground on the other battery and only used one wire to the block. So he series the grounds, with a cable with holes in each end, then 1 wire to the block, now when he starts the motor the solinoid on the starter ratchets the pulls in. This never happened before? I took a peak at his set up, right away I noticed he didn't isolate the grounds, did that works fine!! So a bad ground is as bad sometimes worse than bad connection. Because a bad ground will generate heat, where a bad connection will be a intermitting problem or in your case nothing happens. I've heard of stories that the Perko switches do fail sometimes, but most of the time it's human error. When winterize time comes a simple zip tie will do the trick all the wires that get grounded get chicken banded in black and the positive side gets chicken banded with a white tie or peice of tape marked + or -- your not the first to do this I'm guilty of it myself till I learned the no-brainer method..!!  Hope this helps. PAP,

[jigstick]

Thanks PAP.  Im fairly certain thats what I did.  I reattached the ground that comes from my fuse panel. But not the ground that connects the two batteries together.

 

Is it bad for me to ground the batteries like that...to each other?  Only one is grounded to the engine.  I have the other battery grounded to the battery "grounded" to the engine.

[Xxx]

So you have your grounds jumped from batter to battery then only one ground wire to the block. I'm still stumped as to why that wouldn't work ?? My very own boat with a 350 I/O does the same thing. I ran a separate ground no problems. Maybe it's the amount of draw required to spin these motors over, if I use both on the selecter on both my motor spins like hell even with new Optima batteries I can notice a big difference and starts way quicker. I have a yellow top for starting which is a cranking/trolling the other is a strictly deep cycle I can't remember the color (grey) ?? The reason I use these is my battery access hole is ridiculously small, so I have to take the whole back panel off which is 1 whole peice. I can get these in and out. I think my boat was designed for those little group 24's. Where these are bases off the group 29.

[jigstick]

Correct.  I ground the batteries to each other.  then one battery also grounded to the block.

 

My problem came because I forgot to connect the ground going from one battery to the other.  And I tried to start the boat with the battery that wasn't grounded to anything.