So, I just posted a thread titled Lithium Bank Charger. Was trying to configure my batteries. I double checked with customer service this morning with Power Pole Charger on exactly what to do. They told me to run the main positive and negative cable to my 12v cranking battery which would run parallel to another 12v battery that runs a 40lb thrust power brake trolling motor. The other cable which are all the colored cables go to the positive end of my single 36v trolling battery with the single black cable going to negative side. Well, the 2 12v batteries running in parallel pretty much caught my motor on fire. Once my motor started smoking, I immediately unhooked all wires to cranking battery. Unfortunately, damage was done and now I'm looking at spending $2500 to $3000 to replace melted parts and burned wires. I was told to do this by two different workers. I am so tired of Busting Out Another Thousand.

HOLY [censored]!!! I’d be mad as hell.

Yeh. Those kinda stories are why I kept a simple two lithium battery setup for the troller, one BIG lithium for the motor and everything else, then a simple 3-bank lithium capable charger.

If you decide to make a change in the future, I can highly recommend the Ionic 12v50ah trolling batteries, Ionic 125 cranking/electronics battery, and a NOCO GenPro10x3 charger (or whatever number of banks you’ll need).

Stuff is super lightweight and strong enough for tournament fishing 8+ hour days. Running 4 HDS 12’s, AT2, Sonic hub radio, lights, livewells, etc. all the time.

Sorry to hear about your misfortune..

I know a lot of folks that think motors run on electricity.. Not true..

Motors run on smoke.. And once the smore gets out, they don't run anymore..

Sorry to hear this. It won't happen to me because I'm not trying to fish for days without charging. I follow the keep it simple thought process.

I always just pay a professional to do stuff, especially anything electrical.

One thing is for sure, if I DYI it, I always screw things up!

Sorry that happened

Well actually I talked with another mechanic and that's the first thing he asked me, if I was running Ionic batteries. He said he had problems with those in the past. Not to say your gonna have problems.

I have always just paid someone in the past but with the economy in the crapper the last 3 years I thought I could get this done myself. Big mistake.

I don't know what happened with their charger but two twelves parallel should have produced 12 volts no harm no foul. The charger bound to have fed 36 volts to those twelves somehow to smoke everything. If you have to complete this yourself I'd invest in a volt meter and check all the outputs of the charger for exact voltage before I reconnected anything.

I learned long ago about "RTFM". (Read the frickin manual). There are way too many people who give the wrong advice concerning electronics. From what I am assuming, you are dealing with a difference of potential between two power sources. I don't know how the system is setup, and sorry you had a "blue smoke" event. Items like this should have an inline fuse on the power to prevent something like this from happening. I would call the manuf, and get in touch with someone who knows what your dealing with, and can give you some help repairing the damaged parts.

The guy I'm taking my boat to said it should have worked has diagnostic equipment and is going to run thru everything and get it figured out. The first guy I took it to was the guy who said you can't run the batteries that way and doesn't have diagnostic equipment. The guy with all the right equipment doesn't want me to touch or reconnect anything till he looks at everything and can figure out exactly what went wrong.

That's the thing, the Power Pole charger has a fuse connected to each set of leads. Really don't know how those fuses didn't blow before the engine started smoking.

My guess….you sent 36v to the 12v battery, because…..you didn’t go into the app and tell it to change voltage. Do you have the app downloaded? I’m going to guess no.

I did have the 36v going to the right battery according to the app. I just couldn't configure a second 12v so I did what customer service said and stayed with 1 12v and combined the amps.

Something was connected incorrectly. Combining charging leads, increasing available charging amps, isn’t going to hurt anything. My guess is the wiring polarity was mixed up. Again, just a guess, but I have been wiring DC systems since 1986 on everything from cars, motorcycles, RV’s, boats, yachts. You name it.

Hopefully the mechanic will get it all narrowed down. Obviously, I had something wrong. Something just didn't feel right and was why I double checked with customer service. The main reason I double checked with them was when you typically charge 2 batteries in parallel you attach the chargers positive lead to positive on one battery and negative lead to negative on opposite battery where they were telling me to attach both positive and negative to one battery. Guarantee, once I get my boat back (probably a couple weeks if lucky) I will update everyone with what went wrong.