Fishing Forum

In the attached photo you'll see the cord coming from my minn kota charging system (3 wires; white, green, and black) and I need to wire those to the two wires (the ones with the fuses) that will connect to 1 battery. How do I do it? It was connected before, but I had to cut it, but when I was taking it apart I pulled to hard and pulled it all apart before I could see how it was put together[mad]

Second question, when wiring my two batteries in series to run my trolling motor, do they need to be exact same batteries? Because right now they are both Die Hards but they are different sizes and amps. One is a few years old, and the other is brand new...both are deep cycle. I heard that running one old one and one new one will draw the new battery's life down quicker than normal. Is this true?

Also, when using this minn kota charging system (4 bank), will I run one cord to both batteries (treating them as one big 24v battery), or will I run two seperate cords, treating each battery seperately (12 v)?
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Usualy the cord that is in the top of the picture is the 120 volt cord that gets plugged in to the wall to power the system.

Do you have a picture of the entire charging system?
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It's a Minn Kota MK2300. The cord in the picture with the three wires is actually one of the cables that would run to the battery. The two wires with the fuses are what's supposed to connect to the battery.

The cord that I'm supposed to plug in to the wall is in working order, I didn't touch it[]

Basically I just need to take the three wires from one of the cables coming from the charger and splice it into two wires, one positive and one negative.
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Is this what your charger looks like?



I have never had one of these chargers so it seems strange that they would waste the money for the extra wire that wasn't being used but I'm not the engineer.

In this picture of an extention cabe it looks like as long as you reconnect the wires in the same color combination(black-black and white-red) then it should be good to go.



If you have a volt meter it wouldn't hurt to check it once it is put back together.

Hope that this helps.
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Yeah that's the one, except mine is a 4 bank (will charge up to 4 batteries). In fact, that extension cable is exactly the one I took a picture of. I didn't realize that was a stock "extension cord". Sounds like you're right, black to black, white to red, and the green is not used.
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Hath, save yourself some trouble and email Minn Kota, give them the model number of your charger, and they will send you the destructions on how to wire it up. They are very good at customer service. Just Google 'Minn Kota', go to their web site, then click on Service. the rest is easy !!!!

I just called you bud. You really need to bring it down and we can rig it up. Don't take chances. And don't hook up wires from the charger to the 24v side. Each black and red lead from the charger need to be hooked directly to one battery. On 110 volt cords, black is hot, white is common and green is ground. On dc systems, red is hot and black is ground. Old and new batteries of different amps can be hooked together. The old battery may weaken the new battery, but not a lot. Unless the old battery is junk. I have a load tester for that. I don't think the wires in the picture should be hooked together. Something not right there. The black green white should be the 110 power into the charger. Don't hook up anything until you know where and why.
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Here's a link to a wiring diagram for your 24 v system.
Also in your picuture looks like you are missing the section that went btween the fuses and your cable. That green wire is actually the temp sensor wire and should have terminated in a section above the fuses. Your charger will not work without that wire. I have the exact same charger and found that out by calling Minn Kota.
[url "http://www.cabelas.com/marine-battery-wiring-101-2.shtml"]http://www.cabelas.com/marine-battery-wiring-101-2.shtml[/url]
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