Trojan Boat Forum

Appreciate the help.There is a [green] wire going from [or to] a terminal in my [original] battery-charger to [or from] one of the terminals on each of the engine coils,[red wire from same terminal on coil goes to the electric choke]

I always thought green was ground but with a 30+ yr old boat can't depend on that...[anyway why not ground to the block?].

Will headout this weekend with my bifocals and ohm meter to try and figure it out. Any ideas in the meantime?


Thanks...Flu season....a beautiful thing.....

Just a thought. The wire may be used to turning off the charge while the engine is running. That way the alternator and charger won't fight each other.

I never seen a battery charger wired into the coil . And i have seen some strange stuff

Check to see if the green wires are the ignition wires for each engine. If they are you will get a 12 volts in the wire when the ignition switch is turned on. I think you will find that there is a relay that disables the charger when the engine is running.

I had a bad alternator and the battery would discharge when running even though the generator was running and the charger was on. Once the engine was turned off the charger would charge the battery.

Was a hot wire [with coil powered up],assume to shut down charger when engine running and shore power still applied...alway it's history now...

Thats a new one on me . you never know what they think of .

If your battery charger is connected to the coil it may be abusing the ignition system and could toast the points prematurely. Check with any ABYC affiliated boat repair facility for the correct wiring procedure. My battery charger had instructions to connect the charger directly to the battery with inline fuse on the positive side. A multibank charger to each seperate bank of batteries directly.

THe wire hooked to the coil was not for charging but it it seems a feed wire to cut off the charger when running . I asume the main charging wires went to the battery

In a conventional breaker (points) ignition system the negative side of the coil goes to the points, the positive side goes to hot and may have an external "resistor" in the line or a resistor type wire.

It is possible hat the charger has a feature that senses when the coil is getting voltage as in when th eignition circuit is turned on, thereby disabling the charger as mentioned above.

I found my factory charger was cooking my batteries and switched to a Xantrex 3 bank charger with dash monitor in 2002.

Thenewer chargers are more sophisticated and gentler on batteries than those old school units.

My conventional batteries now use almost no water and I'm changing them out every 4 years.

Something to consider for the future.

RWS

There is no doubt that electronic has come a long way since our boats were made. Chargers , like all electronic, have gone through several generation since those days.