Yeah... I know. But.....

[yupitsme]

Soooo... I have NOCO GenPro10x4 and it works just fine. It is not installed in the boat and won't be. I've made a couple of iterations of how it connects to the batteries. First I cut the ring terminals off and attached battery clamps. What a nightmare that was. So for the last year or so I set it up to use 2 pin water/weather proof connectors. That works 'OK' but I'm growing weary of having to make those connections. So I'm going to a single 8 pin waterproof plug with the correct ratings/specifications. I'm bulkhead mounting one side of the plug in the boat and hard wiring the battery leads to that plug. The other end, of course, connects all the leads coming from the NOCO charger. But... I don't need/want the 6' per circuit leads coming from the charger. That's a total of 24' of duplex what appears to be 12 gauge wiring. I want to shorten those leads by... A LOT. My question follows.

I do not care about the warranty issues involved with shortening the factory leads. My question is: What possible performance issues would shortening the leads actually cause? For the life of me I can't figure out why shortening the leads would impact how the charger performs. Warranty wise making the leads longer is OK. Shortening them is a NO-NO. Why? Voltage/amperage drop/increase over 6' is a non-issue. Temp sensor? Got my doubts.

Will the charger continue to preform as it has with the leads shortened?

For history... I've done this same thing with a DualPro Charger back in the 90's . Then I only had 3 batteries so a 7 pin trailer connector set up worked just fine. I don't recall shortening the leads on that charger though.

[DREWTICK]

some chargers require a certain amount of resistance that is created by the length of the leads and shorting them lessons the resistance required

[yupitsme]

Chargers that require that resistance; are they so sensitive to that resistance that shortening the leads would impact performance but lengthening them by the same amount would not. Seems most manufactures approve lengthening but not shortening. Interesting...

[Bill Reynolds]

I have wondered about this too, and about all I can come up with is related to their voltage sensing circuit on each bank. If this is the case, they have to have a calibrated amount of impedance in their part of the circuit to compare it to the internal impedance of the battery cells. Part of that impedance is the length of the cables.

[FrancoCialone]

I removed my battery charger from the boat and now just "hook" it up with the original leads and wing-nuts, all other electrical conections are bolted on. No need to shorten or change connections, just use wingnuts for a quick connection and no worry warranty claims. I keep it simple, mounted the charger to a piece of plywood and because the boat is in the garage, I can use the charger this way. It works for me.

[yupitsme]

I have wondered about this too, and about all I can come up with is related to their voltage sensing circuit on each bank. If this is the case, they have to have a calibrated amount of impedance in their part of the circuit to compare it to the internal impedance of the battery cells. Part of that impedance is the length of the cables.

But.. impedance is, in part, a function of length.

Also... I've discovered that NOCO's statement of temp. monitoring is relative to ambient temps not internal battery temp.

So, all told, I'm not eliminating the leads. I'm simply shortening them. The two trolling motor batteries may not effectively be shortened at all. By the time I build the harness that runs from the batteries to the bulkhead connector, passes through the connector, then the ~18" lead from the battery charger to the plug in connector.

The electronics only battery and cranking battery will have shorter leads because they'll be closer to the bulkhead connector. I would anticipate those two leads will go from 6' to ~3'.

I'm gonna do it simply because I can not believe that any component in a NOCO charger is so sensitive it can detect, or have an impact on, charger functions.

[Bill Reynolds]

Post 9 - 14 in this thread shed more light on this subject.

https://www.bbcboards.net/showthread.php?t=1140505

[justinp61]

Call NOCO and see what their explanation is.

[yupitsme]

Post 9 - 14 in this thread shed more light on this subject.

https://www.bbcboards.net/showthread.php?t=1140505

Ahhh Haaaa!!!! Load sensing logic circuit huh? Reckon I'll still give it ago. Take out most of the flat cable taking care to make splicing the sensor back in possible. Looks like it will require splicing each circuit lead twice. Wonder how I could test afterwards - I mean without burning down boat and shop.

Justin... all NOCO will say is "... voids warranty" They have already told me, in no uncertain terms, they will not discuss any manner of how the charger is engineered.

[Les Young]

I removed my battery charger from the boat and now just "hook" it up with the original leads and wing-nuts, all other electrical conections are bolted on. No need to shorten or change connections, just use wingnuts for a quick connection and no worry warranty claims. I keep it simple, mounted the charger to a piece of plywood and because the boat is in the garage, I can use the charger this way. It works for me.

I've thought about coming u pwith a way to quickly hook the charger leads up to the battery's & mounting mine on a piece of plywood or star board & make a hole in it to attach a rope so i could raise it up out of the way after charging & just let it down & hook up when charging.

[justinp61]

Ahhh Haaaa!!!! Load sensing logic circuit huh? Reckon I'll still give it ago. Take out most of the flat cable taking care to make splicing the sensor back in possible. Looks like it will require splicing each circuit lead twice. Wonder how I could test afterwards - I mean without burning down boat and shop.

Justin... all NOCO will say is "... voids warranty" They have already told me, in no uncertain terms, they will not discuss any manner of how the charger is engineered.

Wow.

[Russ661]

I’m curious why you don’t want to mount the charger in the boat? I have that same charger mounted laying flat in the battery compartment. I have hard wired 1 bank to the starting battery, 1 bank to each of my 2 TM batteries and 1 bank to a lithium for the livescope. Works great. Just plug in the charger when you store the boat and you are good-to-go!

[yupitsme]

I’m curious why you don’t want to mount the charger in the boat? I have that same charger mounted laying flat in the battery compartment. I have hard wired 1 bank to the starting battery, 1 bank to each of my 2 TM batteries and 1 bank to a lithium for the livescope. Works great. Just plug in the charger when you store the boat and you are good-to-go!

rigging compartment by Doug Weis, on Flickr

20240514_051833[1] by Doug Weis, on Flickr

I had the cables bundled up for a neater install but you should get the idea.

Also... the two pin connector below is a much better way to make the charger connections than spinning 8 wing nuts off/on each time - yuck.
20240514_051908[1] by Doug Weis, on Flickr

[willwork4fish]

I use the same connectors on my nonboard charger (Dual Pro). You can get longer ones so they're easier to get to

https://www.amazon.com/SPARKING-Exte...088BBLMY8&th=1

[yupitsme]

So... it's done... Pic below is of final install/rewire. After that we, my son and I, did a lot of testing/probing and those results posted below. Some may find the information interesting.

First a reminder of what was:



Now what is: Might help to realize this is a 30 year old rigging compartment....



Then some of the results of testing various load conditions.



Of note also... We took the boat out fishing after all was said n' done. After ~7 hours on the water the SOC of the lithium was 64%. After a brief run back to the ramp(approx. 5 mins.) the VSR had the SOC back to 67%. Fishing Toledo Bend where my runs can be up to ~45 mins. the combiner/isolator/VSR will prove beneficial. I used the Active Target 1 very little. It proved to be a pretty significant draw on the electronics battery. If I had it on the whole time on the water I would suspect the SOC would of dropped in the 40 percentile range or less. And... if it'd had been a tournament day I would have added ~ 4-5 hours load time to the electronics only battery.

[ttranger]

Like yourself, I don't have an onboard charger because there is no room in my boat. I removed the ring terminals from the charger leads, and then attached charging plugs made by Connect-Ease to both the batteries and the charger leads. This involved shortening the charger leads by a few inches. So far it has worked very well for me, and it's much easier and more convenient than screwing around with attaching and detaching the terminals all the time

[yupitsme]

Like yourself, I don't have an onboard charger because there is no room in my boat. I removed the ring terminals from the charger leads, and then attached charging plugs made by Connect-Ease to both the batteries and the charger leads. This involved shortening the charger leads by a few inches. So far it has worked very well for me, and it's much easier and more convenient than screwing around with attaching and detaching the terminals all the time

[blkfalc4]

Twice I've done this utilizing Pollak 6 pin trailer connectors. On my current Tracker and also on my previous 05' 519VX. Both with Dual Pro3 chargers w/lithium profiles. (prefer tranformers over switching power supplies.)

The Pollak connectors are rated for 35A which is more than enough for a charger. Mount the charger in a toolbox, mount the 'vehicle' side connector in boat with permanent wired extension leads, cut off fuses and terminals and wire 'trailer' side to charger.

Bring toolbox to boat, plug in trailer plug and connect to 120V in that order. Easy peasy and done.

Super clean and effective.

[lpugh]

9 pin round trailer connectors are avail be, used on big rigs for those with 4 bank chargers

[bobcoy]

I must be the only one that would be concerned with having my charger on top of the gas tank? Bob