Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

For you guys who have fans or shoot at night. Have any of you ever tried to hook your trolling motor up to your generator instead of using batteries? We are gonna shoot at night and I was wondering if there is a way to do this to make it work or maybe it don't. Anyways Iput a plug-in on my trolling motor and tried it that way but the trolling motor seemed to bog the geny down (7000 watt geny)and the blade only twitched. My buddy thought maybe because ofAC andDC or something that that is why it did what it did. Lookingfor any advice on this. Thanks WCL

RE: Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

OMG! Please tell me you didn't mean that you pluggeda 12 to 36volt DC motorinto the 120 volt AC outlet.
I'm not an electrician, but I can tell you (1) that's a no-no. (2) you'll bein the market for a new troller. [:@]
Some generators have a "battery charger" feature that outputs 12V but even that can burn up a troller because they actually output about 14V to charge a battery faster. This is just enough to burn up a troller over time.

I hope yours is OK.

If you would like to run off the genny, there is a company (Homegrown Enterprises) that makes a device called a "converter". It is basicly a transformer that reduces 120V AC to 13V DC. We have one that we like a lot. We still use a battery. But instead of running low at the end of the night, we're still running full power as long as the genny is running.

Good Luck.

RE: Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

link for Homegrown Enterprises: http://www.homegrownenterprises.com/

You plug the converter to the genny and then the the wires from the converter to the battery. The troller is hooked up to the same battery.

It's pretty slick.

Ours is a 12volt and cost about 200.00. Not having to swap out batteries or running out of juice... priceless. ;)

RE: Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

No the trolling motor works fine. It's ok.I didn't burn it up or anything. I figured it was wrong to do that after we tried it right away so I didn't do it long. I do have a small battery charger I guess that plugs into an outlet that came on my boat when I got it but I removed it because I had a regular charger at home I would throwmy batterieson so I'll prolly just use that I guess and hook it up to the battery and run the troller off the battery. Forgot I even had that thing laying around. Now I just need to find it.

? How do you hook your lights up to your geny. Do you just run a couple power stips off the geny andplug your lights into those or do you do it another way?

Thanks WCL

RE: Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

we have 6-700 watt lights on the boat i shoot off of. 3 on one side are plugged into a cord that has a splitter(if thats what its called) then run that to the generator and same for the other 3 on the other side. then we also have 2-650 watt lights right on the nose of the boat and those two are plugged into a splitter and run to the generator. if the batteries for the trolling motor run down, we have a on-board battery charger and we jus plug that into the generator and it works jus fine we can even run the trolling motor while its charging.

RE: Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

I used to do that also. I was told that it would fry the troller in time because the chargers output is 14+ volts. This is supposed to be more than the troller's electronics will handle. The converter is set at 13.6 volts (approximately) and doesn't spike up higher than that. I do know that the troller I was using with the battery charger finally did fry. Chargers fault? I don't know and couldn't say for sure.
I do know that the converter has worked well and we're still on the same troller since getting the converter.
Good Luck.

RE: Trolling motor and Generator ?
 

we usually break the trolling motors within 5 months anyway so we jus bring em to where we got em and they rebuild them or replace them if they have to. we're kinda hard on em.....

Could you also hook up the lights along with the trolling motor to the battery in this process?

I'm looking for a trolling motor

Yeah interesting