Trolling Motor Battery - Proper Care For Good ServicePosted by McDaniel Wong on May 30th, 2021 Just like all other equipment, your trolling motor battery must receive proper care to ensure long life. It isn't difficult to do and only takes a short amount of time and attention. Overheating is the number one enemy of most batteries. It causes the plates to buckle and separate from internal connectors. If you create a habit of running your trolling motor battery completely down, or if you charge it at too fast a pace, the battery will overheat and fail prematurely. Lead-acid batteries are made to accommodate the expansion and contraction that occur in normal operation. Internal cells contain a group of alternating negative and positive plates. trolling motor for kayak -hour batteries have a greater number of plates. These plates are insulated from each other by dielectric separators and are submerged in a remedy of sulfuric acid and water. The perfect solution is is mainly sulfuric acid at full-charge, and mostly water once the battery is in the discharged state. This technique of cells works fine for many years given that the battery is not subjected to excessive discharge and charge rates. It really is normal for heat to be generated during battery use. You can feel this by touching the cables that result in your trolling motor. However, problems arise when the heat becomes excessive. As stated earlier, excess heat will buckle the internal plates. This causes the battery to either fail outright or operate with diminished capacity. It is this second case that can catch you off-guard. The battery seems fine after charging but runs down faster than anticipated. That is a hassle with a trolling motor, but can leave you stranded if it happens to the battery that starts your boat motor. Undercharging is a common cause of battery failure. Weaker cells become exhausted faster than stronger cells and this leads to damaged plates. This damage prevents the cell from ever reaching circumstances of normal charge. Repeated undercharging will eventually destroy the battery. Charging your trolling motor battery at too fast a rate may also destroy the cells. A fast charging rate causes high temperature and will most certainly damage the plates and separators. The sulfuric acid solution can boil to the point where huge amounts of oxygen and hydrogen are produced. This causes corrosion of the plates. Proper operation of a deep-cycle trolling motor battery demands a 50% discharge of rated capacity before charging. Repeated discharging beyond this point causes excess expansion of the cells. This is the reason a lot of people buy battery packs designed for twice the anticipated use.Like it? Share it! More by this author |