Was planning to get the boat fired up for a local cruise today and unfortunately the port side starter just wasn’t going to turn over the engine. The starboard engine started without a hitch. There is a parallel switch on the helm that makes it possible to start the engine from the opposite battery bank, but that wasn’t working either!!!
I originally thought the port starter was bad but soon realized that one of the newly installed Rolls 8 volt batteries was bad and luckily under warranty having been installed only a few month prior to launch. Those batteries are HEAVY weighing at least 100 pounds each! We were able to find the bad battery and pulled it out for replacement early next week. This boat is a chore to maintain. It has a total of twelve 8 volt batteries and three 12 volt batteries running various DC systems throughout!
In the meantime, I spent some time under the bow and found that the four 8 volt batteries originally installed for the bow thruster were a mess and also needed to be replaced. The original batteries made by Rolls were no longer manufactured, but I was able to find 8 volt deep cycle batteries golf cart batteries in Green Bay that will absolutely do the job! So 5 battery replacements later, I am just about ready to have the boat up and running again!
The Port engine room batteries. One of these was bad…
The original bow thruster battery bank in very bad shape!
Replacing the bow thruster battery bank located below the galley floor.
The newly installed, but not yet hooked up, bow thruster batteries!
Replaced a couple of fuses for the parallel switch and I think… this will work…
