I think my battery charger is going or gone

[Mr.J.]

Because I seem to have to charge my marine starting battery after every trip. Plus my voltage meter on my panel goes from really low when starting or using the trim and tilt, to higher than normal while cruising, so I am thinking this is like an alternator on a car and acts up just prior to kicking the bucket.

So this is new to me. Where is the charger on a boat? How hard is it to change and what price range am I looking at?

Any advice for a newbie would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[jj-da-fisher]

I had the same thing this year. First question I have is how old is your the battery? The life of a battery is shorter then you would think (4 years max) Take it to a battery place to have it tested. I had a dead cell and it was doing the exact same thing yours is doing. Well good luck and hope this helps

[Dartee]

Mr J.

Have the battery checked 1st. Before you get stuck out on the river.

When a battery starts to go, it can fail in many differant ways. One of them is to appear to recharge very quickly or take very little power to recharge (hense the higher then normal reading while cruising) and then to drain very quickly (low reading when under starting load) since it only has a surface charge.

[Mr.J.]

Funny, I threw it on the charger last night, we had fished Sunday, and it charged up almost immediatly.

So far you guys seem on the ball.

[Viper]

Mr. J

It sure sounds like you should make a trip to the battery store before you go fishing again.

[eye-tracker]

MrJ,

I think your issue is the battery, I run 2 AGM batteries for cranking the big motor and kicker and never have to put a charger on them as the alternator on the kicker and main engine always top the batteries up.

Get battery checked before you look at replacing the charger.

-Sheldon

[Mr.J.]

So I got the battery checked and it is just fine.

I'll be taking my charger with me this weekend and will keep an eye on the charge level.

Maybe it was just opening weekend jitters.

[bass ackwards]

Dont forget that the output from your charging system on your outboard only outputs about 6 amperes max (some 4 strokes have a 40 amp alternator on them). If you are putting a lot of stuff up to this battery your motor won't be able to recharge the drain unless you are running for hours, by the way the gauge is showing that the charging systems is working. If you are starting or tilt alot it uses allot of juice from the battery. The starting battery should not have a trolling motor hooked up to it.