Low battery reading

[janines.fishtales@cox.net]

Hey all,

The last two times I went fishing, I noticed I was getting a "low battery" reading on my fish finder. The battery was fully charged before fishing. I have a 12v battery that I use both for the FF and for my bait tank. Fully charged it is more than ample to keep both powered for the day. Any ideas as to why I am getting the reading. In all honesty, it looks like one of the battery connections is loosening up a bit and may need to be re-attached. Any suggestions?

Janine

[jruiz]

I don't know which ff you have but most have the ability to display the voltage on your screen by enabling it in your settings. Knowing that will be helpful. In addition many alarms are manually adjustable. So yours might be set too low. For instance it could be set to 11.8 to trigger an alarm. What your ff looks at when reading a voltage is the 12v relative to the common. If let's say there was a salt bridge between those two it could pull the two voltages close together leading to a low voltage alarm. I could go on and on but start there and let us know what you find.

[ctfphoto]

My charger recently went bad and had to be replaced, one thing you may want to check.

[echo1er]

Same with me I went to charge my battery with a wall charger and didnt charge so I use a quick charger and it work fine.

Do you discharge your battery after used? It can set a memory for the cells keeping it low.

[alanw]

lead acid batteries don't have a memory

[Hobie-Pedaller]

it could be.... failing battery, failing charger, bad electrical connections, OR maybe even failing FF head unit/power wiring....

use a voltmeter to test output voltage of battery, BEFORE, DURING & AFTER charging.

when 12 V DC charger is plugged in to 120 VAC wall outlet, it's "output" should be around 13-15 volts DC, or so (higher than 12 V). if it is not, then your charger is going bad.

if the charger is OK, then see if your battery will recharge to 12-13 volts, and hold that charge for many hours, after disconnecting charger. if it will not, your battery is going bad.

if battery & charger are both fine, then you may have bad wiring connections from battery to FF, OR your FF head unit and/or its power wiring may be going bad.


PS - i just went thru similar issues last month, that my battery would not adequately power FF. after testing various voltages as described above, i determined my battery was failing, and would not hold a charge above around 10 V. even though my charger output was close to 15 V, and i would leave charger connected to battery over night.

Originally Posted by jruiz

I don't know which ff you have but most have the ability to display the voltage on your screen by enabling it in your settings. Knowing that will be helpful....

i agree, this can be VERY helpful, to know what voltage is actually getting to the FF head unit.

PS2 - about 5 years ago, my first FF was failing. the FF's factory provided power wiring became so corroded, that even when i had a fully charged 12 V battery connected to FF power cable, only about 10-11 volts were actually getting to the FF head unit.
i had to replace the FF's factory made power/tranducer cable, and FF head unit was still OK.
.

[janines.fishtales@cox.net]

Ok. Thank you for all the suggestions. I will look into all this. I have been wanting to replace that battery anyway. It is too heavy. I am thinking of buying the already put together "kibble" bait tank OEX sells. It has its own battery. My bait tank is the 5 gal bucket system, which works ok, but it's too top heavy. So I'm guessing I have to get another battery for my FF, right? What do you guys think of the OEX bait tank?

Janine

[ctfphoto]

I bought the OEX bait tank and it works great.

It has enabled me to catch Halibut, WSB and Yellowtail.

[jruiz]

Ya you could throw money at it and the problem might go away. Or you might find yourself in a situation where you spent all this money and the problem is still there. I think it would be very beneficial for you to troubleshoot and fix regardless of which route you take.