connecting a trolling motor to my engine alternator

[ikew]

I have a 1995 60 HP mercury engine. I have recently purchased a Xi5 pinpoint trolling motor. I use the anchoring mode quite a bit with my Lowrance HDS 7 gen 3 fish finder. It uses nearly all of my battery AH for a whole day.

I don't know the max output of the alternator (does anyone know?).

Am I taking a chance of damage to

my engine alternator (it now charges only my engine start battery) if I also

connect to it to trolling battery? Would I be better off getting another battery & parallel them. I am thinking about getting a solar panel to charge them as I may not have access to power. Thanks in advance for any help

[Oldone]

Although it will probably work, at least for a while. It is not a good idea and will mostly likely result in overheating of the charging system with eventual failure. I would find another solution and not risk the damage.

[wmitch2]

This will work better and safer. It charges your TM batteries when the big motor is running and if at the end of the day your start battery is weak, it will draw from the TM batteries to start the motor.

http://www.yandina.com/index.htm

[Nova Kaw 650]

I have a 1995 60 HP mercury engine. I have recently purchased a Xi5 pinpoint trolling motor. I use the anchoring mode quite a bit with my Lowrance HDS 7 gen 3 fish finder. It uses nearly all of my battery AH for a whole day.

I don't know the max output of the alternator (does anyone know?).

Am I taking a chance of damage to

my engine alternator (it now charges only my engine start battery) if I also

connect to it to trolling battery? Would I be better off getting another battery & parallel them. I am thinking about getting a solar panel to charge them as I may not have access to power. Thanks in advance for any help

Your battery/batteries are no good.
Thousands of boats out there running that trolling motor, and others draining as much or more power, and don't run out of battery power.

[CatFan]

You aren’t going to get blood out of a turnip.

[Sunny Jim]

With that motor, you won't have an alternator. You will have a stator. This is what supplies the 12 volts to run the engine and some additional power to charge batteries. The more batteries you try to charge, the less charge each battery would receive. The stator for a particular motor will only put out a certain number of amps. You can research how much your stator puts out by your motor manufacturer and serial number. Trying to charge too many batteries without the use of an onboard "charge-on-the -run" charger may well damage the stator. They are costly to replace. Try contacting some of the marine charger companies. They will most likely give you some options to keep your batteries charged while on the water. I'm sure that there are a number of BBC users that have used chargers for sale if you wanted to go that route.

[BOATS]

https://www.minnkotamotors.com/Batte...ator-Chargers/

[CatFan]

With that motor, you won't have an alternator. You will have a stator. This is what supplies the 12 volts to run the engine and some additional power to charge batteries. The more batteries you try to charge, the less charge each battery would receive. The stator for a particular motor will only put out a certain number of amps. You can research how much your stator puts out by your motor manufacturer and serial number. Trying to charge too many batteries without the use of an onboard "charge-on-the -run" charger may well damage the stator. They are costly to replace. Try contacting some of the marine charger companies. They will most likely give you some options to keep your batteries charged while on the water. I'm sure that there are a number of BBC users that have used chargers for sale if you wanted to go that route.

The charge-on-the-run charger still gets its power from the outboard, so its no different than directly connecting to the motor. Mercury recommends against any setup that has more than a single standard cranking battery being charged by the outboard because of issues with overheating regulators due to long charge times.

[Nova Kaw 650]

Your battery/batteries are no good.
Thousands of boats out there running that trolling motor, and others draining as much or more power, and don't run out of battery power.

I'll stick with this ^^^ with a fair amount of certainty.

[Sunny Jim]

I may well be incorrect, as I'm not a marine mechanic. I do know that onboard chargers are used to charge more than one battery, one of them(only one) should be the starting battery.