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Batteries


Slo Poke1

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I feel like an idiot, but I'm confused about my battery installation.  I have a Pathfinder 2200V with 3 batteries and replaced one deep cycle last January.  The other deep cycle and starting batteries (all Interstate) were both 6 years old.  Now all three were dead and not taking a charge so back to the Interstate store and they said the new battery polarity was reversed and had only 3 volts, which they said was VERY low and the warranty was void due to the polarity, even though they agree they were connected properly (showed them a photo).  I was reinstalling the batteries and with the the cranking battery installed, had nothing to the ignition, but the bilge pump turned on when the main positive cable attached.  I added one deep cycle battery (battery switch to "OFF") and when I switched it to "ALL", the positive cranking battery post melted.  Any idea WTF is wrong?

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Wow, that's crazy. Sounds like a direct short (positive touching negative somewhere).  So, you ran three batteries for years with the same wiring configuration and no problem? Has anything else changed? Did you change the battery switch and maybe connected the wires wrong? Or, it could be your battery switch has fallen apart inside and something is floating around causing the short. 

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Considering you have 3 batteries I assume you have a 24 volt trolling motor and one of those batteries are used as a back up cranking battery @ 12 volts. Sounds to me like you may have the 24 volt supply hooked to one of the terminal of the battery switch. Without more pic's and a meter in our hands it is hard to trouble shoot over the interweb. Check this link out for a simple diagram to follow......

 

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Based on the diagram above, I replaced TM #1 in January (my brother-in-law) removed the battery, but my photo shows TM 1 positive to TM 2 positive and TM negative to TM 2 negative.  If this is indeed backwards, I would think think this caused my reversed polarity.  He thought he was doing me a favor since he was out of work and sleeping on my couch.

 

and yes, the 2 deep cycle are for a trolling motor.

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Hooking them up positive to positive / negative to negative should not have reversed polarity. It would make only 12 volts but the amps would be higher so cables could get hot ... Did you try to run the trolling motor with them hooked up like that. I wouldn’t think that would work but would probably build heat trying to make it work. 

If the two batteries were still pos to pos neg to neg .. when you switched to all you prolly had a bunch of juice on top of that cranking battery. As stated above hard to say exactly what happend from out here on the web .

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