on board charger working???

[sandhills]

How do I know if my 3 bank charger is charging correctly? I bought my boat used 2 years ago and have not changed any batteries. Towards the end of last Fall my trolling batteries and starting battery were not lasting very long. I charged for 24 hrs the other day and within 1 day, I couldnt even trim my motor.I'm thinking about just replacing all of them....hoping that the problem isnt my charger. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by sandhills

How do I know if my 3 bank charger is charging correctly? I bought my boat used 2 years ago and have not changed any batteries. Towards the end of last Fall my trolling batteries and starting battery were not lasting very long. I charged for 24 hrs the other day and within 1 day, I couldnt even trim my motor.I'm thinking about just replacing all of them....hoping that the problem isnt my charger. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Have you tried a different charger? Similar results?

[sandhills]

No...I have not tried a different charger. That would seem too easy

[REW]

Just put a conventional charger on each battery for 24 hours.
Then swing by a battery shop like Batteries plus with your boat and have the nice folks there do a load test on your batteries.

If you have battery issues, the load test will indicate the bad battery.

If you find that all of the batteries are bad- then it is fairly likely that your on board charger is all right.

But, if you find that all of your batteries are good; then one might think that you have on board charger issues.

You can take any of your batteries - plug a hand held spot light into the particular battery and let the light shine for a couple of hours. This will do a good job of discharging the batteries. As you do this test, use a voltmeter to monitor the battery voltage from time to time.

After a couple of hours you will likely have a good battery down to under 12 and possibly 11 volts.
Now plug in that on board charger, while monitoring the battery voltage. As soon as the charger comes on, you should see a jump in the battery voltage. Then, as a few hours go by, you should see the voltage gradually climb to something close to 14.4 volts. If you don't have the voltage climb this high and if you have good batteries, you may have to think about having your charger serviced.

Good luck
REW