kaz911
Active Member
Hi Guys and Girls
today was a great day. I replaced my SR 310's "standard" battery cables with some that are the RIGHT size for the 50 Ah Mastervolt ChargeMaster charger I put in.
The original cables put in by SR does really more damage to the batteries than good and are really too small for a 30 Ah factory charger.. And the charger was "okay" but I did not like the overall quality of it.
So today all my charge cables was replaced with AWG 2 (33.5 mm2) cables suitable for LOW voltage drop over the total of 9 meter cable (4.5m up - and 4.5 m back again). Circuit breakers got replaced with 50Ah versions and the "3rd" battery bank wires was put in as well despite I do not have a 3rd battery bank yet.
And in went a MasterVolt 3 Bank ChargeMaster 12/50 which is a really heavy duty charger.
And the result (pictures will follow later ) - pure joy....
Before when opening and closing the engine hatch while the old charger / cables was in - you could see the effect right away (with shore power connected) - battery voltage would drop - and lots of amps would be sucked out of batteries during the hatch open/close operation and recovery would take HOURS until batteries was back to full.
Now - I can hardly SPOT on my tracker WHEN the hatch was opened.
So if you want to do YOUR boat a favour! - Check your charger and charger cables for being sized right for your boat. Rule of thumb - minimum 10% of Ah should be the charger capacity. 15% is better....
So if you have like me 300 Ah in total battery capacity - your charger should be absolute minimum of 30A. And cables should be the right size as well. But that is slightly more complex to calculate.
But the total LENGTH of the cable has a big influence on the size of cable you should use. Else you might end up with my situation where the factory installed cables was so small that the 30A charger would NEVER EVER be able to deliver much more than 16A total. And charging from fully depleted back to "full" took almost 7 days...
So today is a great day and I know tomorrow will be as well
today was a great day. I replaced my SR 310's "standard" battery cables with some that are the RIGHT size for the 50 Ah Mastervolt ChargeMaster charger I put in.
The original cables put in by SR does really more damage to the batteries than good and are really too small for a 30 Ah factory charger.. And the charger was "okay" but I did not like the overall quality of it.
So today all my charge cables was replaced with AWG 2 (33.5 mm2) cables suitable for LOW voltage drop over the total of 9 meter cable (4.5m up - and 4.5 m back again). Circuit breakers got replaced with 50Ah versions and the "3rd" battery bank wires was put in as well despite I do not have a 3rd battery bank yet.
And in went a MasterVolt 3 Bank ChargeMaster 12/50 which is a really heavy duty charger.
And the result (pictures will follow later ) - pure joy....
Before when opening and closing the engine hatch while the old charger / cables was in - you could see the effect right away (with shore power connected) - battery voltage would drop - and lots of amps would be sucked out of batteries during the hatch open/close operation and recovery would take HOURS until batteries was back to full.
Now - I can hardly SPOT on my tracker WHEN the hatch was opened.
So if you want to do YOUR boat a favour! - Check your charger and charger cables for being sized right for your boat. Rule of thumb - minimum 10% of Ah should be the charger capacity. 15% is better....
So if you have like me 300 Ah in total battery capacity - your charger should be absolute minimum of 30A. And cables should be the right size as well. But that is slightly more complex to calculate.
But the total LENGTH of the cable has a big influence on the size of cable you should use. Else you might end up with my situation where the factory installed cables was so small that the 30A charger would NEVER EVER be able to deliver much more than 16A total. And charging from fully depleted back to "full" took almost 7 days...
So today is a great day and I know tomorrow will be as well