I have a problem with Battery 1 that does not happen on Battery 2. Both batteries have a common ground (jumpered one battery to the other) while the hot leads go to a standard Perko battery selector switch. With just battery 1 selected and without any loads being switched ON, the battery voltage reads about 13V (both batteries are 2 week-old marine deep-cycle group 24s). When I switch on the stereo, the bilge pump, or SOME of the running lights (but not ALL), the battery voltage monitor at the Nav station goes down to anything from 0 to around 5 to 6 volts. With battery 2 only selected, there is no appreciable drop in voltage, and everything works normally. Also, battery 2 starts the engine (Yanmar 3GM30F) just fine, while Battery 1 might not even make the solenoid click. Because not all loads make battery 1 voltage drop (the water pressure pump and cabin lights do not cause the drastic drop in voltage), I'm making an assumption that the battery is OK, but I have some other problem. Has anyone experienced anything similar?
Electrical gremlins
- Thread starter djleav
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Sounds like a bad connection between battery 1 and the battery switch. There probably is a lot of resistance somewhere in the circuit so that a small load will work okay, but the high resistance won't allow a lot of current flow with a large load, so the voltage drops to near zero at the battery switch.
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