I took Cindy Sue out today for the first time this season. She has a dual battery charger on board and when I get back home after a trip I just plug her in. It's one of those that you can leave plugged in all the time. It monitors the charge over time. I leave her plugged in year round when not in use (several months at times). The charger that I have has two sets of lights on top of the unit. Green means charged, red means it's charging. When I went out to have a look today, one of the sets of lights was green and the other set was not on at all. Cindy Sue and I finally got out to the lake and I was praying that her big motor would start. The big motor started, all the electronics worked, bilge, etc... worked. However, Cindy Sue's trolling motor would not work. I have a couple of questions: Does the trolling motor use a battery by itself or is the trolling motor battery shared with the other "smaller" electronics? I would think that it would "share" a battery while leaving the other battery for the big engine only. If it is the battery that's the problem, how do I know which battery is for the big engine and which one is for the trolling motor? I've had the batteries changed once, but someone else did it. I want to do it myself this time.

No snakes in the boat this time. The moth balls worked beautifully. Who knew that moths had balls that kept snakes and rats away?

Thank you.
GR

Sounds like you have corrosion on the battery terminals for the battery charger bank that is not lighting up.Try switching the charger leads from one battery to the other to see if that bank will lite up.If not your charger is broke.Switch the leads with the charger un-plugged,you never want to cause a spark around lead acid batteries.They could explode.
It is not a good idea to keep your battery charger running 24/7.You never know if that thing will short out and ruin your batteries and or start a fire.Get you a timer from Home Depot or Lowes and set on bypass for a full charge and once your batteries are charged set it for 2 hours on and 22 hours off.
If you only have two batteries,one is for starting and one is for the trolling motor.Most boats are set-up where all the electronics are connected to the starting battery.
Check the water level in each cell of both of your batteries.
There is more to battery maintance then just plugging in the charger.

LIKE MOST DUAL CHARGERS YOU SHOULD HAVE AN INLINE FUSE TO EACH BATTERY. ONE IS MOST LIKELY BLOWN. AND YES CHECK TO SEE THAT YOUR TERMINALS ARE NOT CORRODED. IF NOT THE FUSE PULL THE SUSPECTED BATT. OUT AND HAVE IT CHECKED AT WAL-MART OR PEP- BOYS THEY WILL DO IT FOR FREE. GOOD LUCK.

Had two Guest chargers that did the same thing, they have a thermal circuit breaker in the wiring right where you hook them up to the batteries that went bad. Swapping the wiring at the batteries showed it to be the charger. Both times Guest did replace the chargers in warranty but it took 10-14 days to ship them the chargers and to get the replacements.

GR
I would check to see that the batteries have water in them. If you keep the charger plugged up all the time it will eventually boil out all the water and this will cause the batteries to sometimes go bad.