Was in the garage yesterday and had no shoes on and the garage floor was damp. Laid my arm on the trolling motor and it really knocked the crap outta me. This cant be normal?? Anyone have this happen? MK fortrexx 112#
Was in the garage yesterday and had no shoes on and the garage floor was damp. Laid my arm on the trolling motor and it really knocked the crap outta me. This cant be normal?? Anyone have this happen? MK fortrexx 112#
Did you have the battery charger hooked up?
Do immediately disconnect your charger and have it measured for AC leakage and repaired or replaced.
And make sure to always use a GFCI. On a trip, carry your own portable GFCI and don't trust your hosts or motel outlet.
Yes the battery charger was plugged into a gfci outlet: It wasn't a shock like it made my pee myself but it was a bit uncomfortable!
Also it is a new minn kota pc 4 bank charger
Good.
A gfci does not disconnect a circuit just because an amount of live AC voltage is being leaked to a normally grounded surface such as a trolling motor case.....not until current flows such as if you were standing in bare feet or water for example completing a path for electrical current to flow to earth ground.
I'm just glad I'm not the nat'l sustaining engineer for MinnKota PC series chargers....they are generating many problem reports.
Last edited by Lou r Pitcher; 07-03-2017 at 09:05 AM.
Don't do that. 24 or 36 volts can knock the crap outta you too. It doesn't mean the charger is shocking you, especially if you're wet. As little as 16 volts can cause your heart to fail if it gets under your (wet) skin.Originally Posted by Stratos33
Last edited by billnorman1; 07-02-2017 at 05:14 AM.
It must be a fairly small voltage because with shoes on I couldn't feel anything
When I drink Jack Black I get the same way.
If your TM was connect to AC hot, then when you touched it while touching the floor, the GFCI would have tripped. That means it's likely your TM is connected to your service ground.
If your TM is connected to ground, and you got shocked by touching the floor and TM, most likely the floor isn't at the same ground as your wiring. Maybe your subpanel isn't grounded properly.
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity,
nothing else matters.
yet another reason for some sort of disconnect to the TM when charging, correct? I mean, that would have prevented this, yes? Just trying to confirm and learn.
If you find out that it was something about the charger, please report back. I have the 3 bank Precision charger and it's in the same compartment as the fuel tank, as I'm sure the configuration is on a whole lot of bass boats across the years. Trying to think how to check a charger for AC leakage now....
Kevin | 2000 Champion 191 | 2000 Yamaha OX66 200hp
With a volt meter,connect the neg lead to a house ground and touch the pos lead to the charger housing while the charger is plugged in. If you get a volt reading at all,the charger has a short.
What could be shorted to produce a voltage on the case of the charger? If the case is metal, it's going to be grounded. Hot shorted to ground would trip the GFCI or the breaker. Neutral is already bonded to ground at the panel, so a short of neutral to ground won't produce a voltage between the case and a ground point.
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity,
nothing else matters.
Im sure Im missing something here but how would ac voltage get on the frame of the tm?
The 24 or 36 volts of the trolling motor batteries probably shocked him, he was wet and those power sources aren't usually GFCI connected. It probably didn't have anything to do with the charger power supply, it just provided a ground. Even 12 volts can irritate you if you get it under your skin.
It's probably that the TM is grounded. You only get shocked if you touch two different voltages.
I'd be really surprised if battery voltage was being felt with the return path through the floor.
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity,
nothing else matters.
Lick a 9 volt battery top. Then say that. It all depends on whether it gets through or on wet skin.
But that's not the case here. One of the conductors is a garage floor. If you can feel the output of a 9V battery passing through a garage floor, then you are on to something.
The likely scenario here is that the outlet ground is at a different voltage than the floor and soil under it. Very common when power is fed away from the main panel service ground.
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity,
nothing else matters.
Im leaning this direction as well.
There could be several things wrong.
1) The GFCI is wired incorrectly - Ive seen that many many times.
2) The sub panel and/or the garage is wired/grounded incorrectly/poorly.
For sure, the charger should not be passing anything like this kind of voltage to the TM no matter how anything else is wired.
Smokercraft Phantom 202 Yamaha F115/Merc 9.9
Garmin 7610xsv/GT51M-TM/Panoptix PS21/LiveScope
Why am I hanging out here when I could be fishing.....
Was the charger plugged into a GFCI outlet. If it is older construction the garage plugs may not be GFCI protected.
This is an interesting problem. That was why I initially asked about the charger. Since the boat is on tires there is really no electrical path to the floor unless the charger is connected. I was thinking that the charger ground might somehow be connected to the TM ground. It would be interesting to take a volt meter and see what the voltage is between the TM housing and the wet floor.
But on a more serious note. It just occurred to me that if there is an electrical path from the wall outlet to the TM housing there might also be an electrical path between the wall outlet and the gas engine housing. If someone were to charge the batteries while the boat was in the water this could be a serious hazard. Just thought I would throw that out.
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