Quote Originally Posted by Nutbush View Post
I have a dilemma. I am wanting to start pulling/pushing cranks. My current setup is a battery for my motor and a battery for my trolling motor, 12v. I am pretty sure that to be able to keep up the constant speed that I will need, that I will probably get about 3-4 hours of run time out of the one battery. Also, I have two finders running off of my trolling battery. I currently have two choices: run a separate cable from my start battery to my finders, or hook up the two batteries in parallel. My future plans are to run the trolling motor off of two batteries parallel and the one dedicated to the motor, but I am going to wait till one of the batteries is dead so i can buy those two at the same time. If you were in my situation what would you do?
Run your finders and anything else off cranking battery. Don't hook the 2 together. If one is weaker than the other it will also draw on good battery. Also you stand a good chance of running down cranking battery to the point motor won't crank. If I was in your situation I'd buy 2 batteries and be done with it, But not knowing your financial situation in this case think I would buy 1 good battery then hook troller to it and use existing battery as back up without hooking together. Kinda goes against what I would normally say about buying 2 matching batteries but sometimes finances dictate otherwise.