Well! The batteries on the trolling motor haven't been holding a charge....after less than a half hour of use, they die...they should last for 3-4 hours at least!! Our first set of batteries lasted over 6 years, and this set was less than a year old!
They've been plugged in overnight and still read dead this morning, so we took them to the parts store to have them checked. One had bad cells and the other one is borderline bad...so rather than spank it and put it in the corner to think about its behavior, we decide to replace both batteries.
Dale has been wanting to get plastic boxes for the batteries to keep them out of the weather and salt water. So we bought the boxes along with the 2 new batteries.
We had unhooked the myriad of tangled cables, and marked them all so we knew how to hook everything back up.
Then we removed the old trays that held the old batteries, cleaned all the dirt and sand that had been hiding underneath, and filled the old screw holes with silicon.
We had to figure out where the new boxes would go, because they need a little more room than the little trays. We had to hook up the cables again to make sure we had enough clearance. When I started putting things together, I noticed that one of the cables had busted almost all the way...it was being held on by only a little piece of the plastic sheath!
I was looking at the wire, and I saw that it was corroded...so I cut a little piece off so I could put a new end on...and...more corrosion! I kept cutting off little pieces...I showed Dale, and he took over cutting off little pieces...and we had to cut off almost 3 inches to get to good wire! Finally, I got to put the new end on...and moved on to other cables...When I moved another wire, I felt a tiny "snap" and there went another wire!! We looked at a couple more wires, and they were all breaking and totally corroded!
Now, mind you, we've learned a lot about corrosion and rust since we got to Rockport last October, and a wonderful product called CorrosionX, which is my new best friend...but this didn't happen just in the last 6 months...this is years of corrosion making its way up the wires, inside the plastic sheathing so we couldn't have seen it or known it was there.
So now we're wondering if that's why these batteries only lasted a year...we've never had batteries die so quickly!
But here's the difficult part...all of the broken wires are from the battery charger...and they're hard-wired to the charger...so I don't know if they're replaceable, or if we're going to be in the market for a new charger now, too!
I guess it's time to start researching charger repair....and we definitely won't be using the trolling motor until we get it fixed or replaced...Oh, well...you know what BOAT stands for, don't you?
Break Out Another Thousand!!
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