Battery Drains

[Bradybo99]

One of the batteries drains while boat is running, and the voltage begins dropping soon after I'm on the water. Has anyone had this problem with their 22ve?

[chpthril]

Im going to presume that after an outing, you are charging the suspect battery and prior to going out, you are confirming its still charged.

Which battery, main cranking or house? Whats the voltage at prior to beginning to drop?

[Bradybo99]

I'm not sure if it's the house or main cranking battery, but it's the one closet to the motor. The voltage is 15 before it starts draining. I pull and charge the battery after every outing, and have spare battery to switch out while on the lake. I bought the boat used, and there is no Tige dealership in my area.

[chpthril]

The in-board battery is typically the house battery. Does it drop to the point that thinks like stereo stop working, blower sounds slow, lights look dim?

Is that 15V from the helm gauge or a hand held meter? Thats kind of high even from an alternator. What the lowest you measure from the battery?

And you are sure only one of the batteries is running down? This would point the house bank not being connected correctly, a bad cable or the diode isolator has failed. Can be diagnosed with a hand held meter and a means to run the engine.

[Bradybo99]

It's definitely only the one battery that drains, and the reading is from the helm gauge. I will have to measure from the battery and get back to you.

Everything seems to operate normally until the helm gauge warns me that the voltage is low, so then I just switch out the batteries.

Thank you!

[chpthril]

Clip the meter's ground lead to the "good" battery's ground post and tough the meter's positive lead to the + post of the suspect battery and see if you read battery voltage. No voltage tells us that the ground link cable is likely not connected to one of the batteries.

Next, fire up the engine and measure the voltage on the center post of the diode block. Should be higher then battery level, like 13V+ to indicate the alternator is charging.

Next, measure the output on each of the two outside posts. They should show a couple tenths of a volt less then the center post and still higher then battery voltage. next, move to the positive post of the battery and it should read what you measured on the outside posts of the diode block, again, which should be higher then battery voltage at rest/engine off.

Somewhere in there, I think you will find that the house battery is not getting any alternator charge when the engine is running.