Dual battery setup question?
 

I am the second owner of a 96 Shabah Z255 and it came with dual battery setup from previous owner. Have a couple of questions. First is there are a lot of positive and negative wires going to battery number 2 and I know for sure one set is the pump and the other set is the stereo.

Now my question is I had the switch set to off when I took my boat in for winterizing and it sat for couple of days before they did the winterization. They called me when they started and wondering why my batteries were dead? I was under the impression that if the switch was set to off the power to the boat would also be off except for the pump and stereo? So how could batteries be dead .
Could the previous owner install it wrong? Like I said earlier I know the two sets of wires to Battery 2 but there are more.

Secondly my switch is down by the floor of the rear seat on the side but would like to move it cause I have this I would like to install, Blue Sea 7650 Add-A-Battery System with ACR and Battery Switch. I would like to move to the engine compartment but how do I get to it if I have the electric sundeck? If I switch the power to off the sundeck won't close and vice versa?

Thanks

Brad

Re: Dual battery setup question?
 

I cant answer all of your questions but I can tell you the add a battery is a good addition. Keeps starting battery charged even when house is getting low. As for all the positives and negatives- you may just have to follow them and see what they go to and put them on the battery you want them on. It can be a pain but that is the one sure way to know what you have going on down there.

I worked on a fishing boat for a guy a while back. He could not figure out why his stereo was cutting out and messing up. Turns out he had his stereo wired at 24v by hooking up the wires wrong in the spring. Took me a while to trouble shoot as he said everything was working great last time they used it- before it was winterized.

Re: Dual battery setup question?
 

hi Brad,
As far as the batteries actually going dead with the switch off, it could be bad batteries or it may not have been installed properly. If it was in the off position, it could have the pump or whatever else wired directly to the batteries, bypassing the switch. Not sure why there wouild be a bunch of pos and neg wires feeding off one of the batteries, but that would still feed juice to whatever those wires go to, even if the battery switch was off.
I installed the bluesea add a battery system on my 96 z240 talari three years ago. It has the big battery selector switch and a battery isolator. Everything was installed on one side of the engine compartment. I mounted a fuse box in that same compartment and have all my accessories run off of that, with an 8 guage hot wire feeding the fuse box from the output on the battery switch. The isolator will need to be hooked up to the starter switch circuit, so I just ran a wire off the starter solenoid as apposed to running one all the way up to the ignition switch. My Talari doesn't have the electric sundeck lift, but I did wire the tilt/trim pump directly to one of the batteries (in-line fuse, of course) so I could tilt the motor. I installed the switch and isolator and then measured for the cables, which I bought on ebay. Everything has worked perfectly since install with no problems.
I hope that helps,
Paul

Re: Dual battery setup question?
 

here is a pic of my battery setup

Re: Dual battery setup question?
 

Paul,

Thanks for the reply . I want to install this on my boat but the wiring on how to do it is very confusing with the acr and I have been putting it off for over a year.

Re: Dual battery setup question?
 

I know what you mean. The directions are somewhat confusing and took me a while figure out. Nothing blew up or melted when I turned everything on after installation, so I guess I got it right, lol. Hope the pic helped and good luck on your installation!