Thrusters - again

L

Levitation

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 12, 2009
Messages
1,294
Fluid Motion Model
C-248 C
Hull Identification Number
fmlt2510f809
Vessel Name
Charlotte Ann
I had the 110 volts shut off to the boat for a while, ~ 2 weeks... Happened to check the battery voltages two days ago and the #2 position showed only 9.7 volts (arggghhhh)

Long story short - pun intended - found a steady drain of 1400 ohms on the thruster battery (8.5 milliamps)... While this is not much it is 1400 more than tolerable...

1: In the process of trying to puzzle this out I discovered the #2 position on the battery voltage switch is the thruster not the house battery as the manual claims...
2: Discovered the rear thruster is the culprit... There is no current drain on the cable run to the front thruster...
3: Discovered the rear thruster is a real bare to get at...
4: I do not see any connection to that positive cable leading off to other equipment... As best I can tell this thruster is the 'sealed' variety as the cable goes directly through a rubber grommet in the motor case...

Is this low grade 'short circuit" in the thruster a known problem? The thruster does run in both directions and sounds the same as the front thruster...

I let the Promarine boat charger bring the thruster battery back up for 24 hours ... I just load tested that battery minutes ago and it shows as weak... I unhooked the boat charger (I am becoming less and less fond of that Promarine unit) and dragged the big charger I use in the shop for the bulldozers, etc. (70 pounds) up the ladder into the cockpit (I may need another operation soon) and it is currently stuffing 35 amps into the battery... I will give it a good equalizing charge and test it again, but I suspect it is a goner (kiss another $200 bill goodbye - double arrrggghhhh)

5: Discovered the Promarine charger ignored the load test on the thruster battery and continued to insist that it was fully charged and floating after the load was removed... (did I mention I am becoming less than fond of this unit?)
 
Denny-o,

3: Discovered the rear thruster is a real bitch to get at...
Click to expand...

Have not had this power drain, will keep an eye out for it. We are in the far north climate (Kodiak, AK) so have taken the batteries out for the winter and storing them inside.

You are correct about the positioning of the stern thruster. Any normal sized human can not even get close, even if you spend hours dismantling the stern components (exhaust pipe, tubes, water lines, etc).

My solution, after reading all the great information on Tugnuts,took out the removable parts (ie. stern seat, sink) that were in the way, then decided to make repairing a "replaceable part" doable. So, out came the saws-all and we cut out a large square of the floor under the sink. After the repair, this cut floor piece sits nicely back in its orginial position without any other reinforcement underneath (though we will later support it more securely). With this enlarged opening, a man with normal shoulder width can get down into the stern to work on replacing a shear pin on the stern thruster. It still takes hours to tear apart all the pieces and put them back together, to give you access to the thruster.

If you shop for a new charger to replace the Promarine, let me know what find that works for you. We don't have a heavy duty shop charger to fall back on...

Thanks, Don
 
Hello Denny,

I have not tested this before for a drain but have not had the complaint. One thing I would say is to make sure the battery switch is always in the off position so you do not have this worry as you leave the boat unattended. I will send this note about the drain to Side Power for their response.

One thing I can add about the stern thruster access is that you are 100% correct. Being that this is the lowest point in the boat and in the stern, we did not have much room when we designed the original R25. One thing I can add is that I can pull this motor and replace on my own within a two hour window. I am young, long and flexible which does have its advantages and disadvantages 😀 .

Ranger Tugs continues to learn over the years and this is one thing that we spent some time trying to make better access. On the R25SC and R27, we opened up that area quite a bit making it pretty easy to access for shear pin replacement.

When I replace a shear pin on a motor, I take the plastic inspection hatch completely out and am able to pull the motor without moving anything else. Enlarging the hole where that hatch is and adding a one piece hatch to the stern teak doors would also make it much easier. I understand your frustration with this one. I will report back with some answers from Side Power on this one. Thanks for the post.
 
One other thing I might add. Did you disengage the cutoff switch next to the batteries? This is the thruster switch.

On mid 2009 and prior Ranger tugs, the volt meter is as follows. That manual was created after your boat and we switched positions down the road.

1= Engine
2= Thruster
3= House
 
Thanks for the reply Andrew...
1: No, I did not have the thruster battery switch turned off during storage ... The thruster battery switch will be off from now on...
2: It is more likely than not that there is some electrical fault to ground through a resistor in the electronics/relay on that stern thruster motor (failed isolation diode maybe?) as opposed to the bow thruster... If it were not so difficult to remove I would tear it apart right now to see what is going on (bad habits from a previous lifetime in plant engineering) The motor appears to run nominally - awaiting your report on an opinion from SidePower...
The thruster control electronics at the helm is powered through the front thruster line which does not show a constant load to ground... Though there could be a fault on the signal wires from the control head to the rear thruster relay(s)... I am awaiting Sidepower's opinion on that...
3: The Promariner charger appears to be a piece of crap engineering - sorry about that as they seem to be decent folks...
a) The first charger failed completely inside of 2 years and had to be replaced
b) this replacement charger does not appear to charge the thruster battery except when the house battery is calling for a charge... After letting the Promariner charge for 24 hours on the depleted battery and then doing a load test (the battery failed) the Promariner charger still insisted the battery was up to charge and floating...
I then unhooked the Promariner from the thruster battery and put on a dumb charger and the battery took 35 amps for 3 hours with the charger on the lower voltage tap (took 50+ amps with the transformer set on the high voltage tap) - this is not the behavior of a charged battery... I unhooked the charger when I went to bed last night to let the battery set over night to bleed off the surface charge and to cool down... The battery voltage was normal this morning and it took a 200 amp test load (10 seconds) and the voltage remained within the green (Yes! 200 bucks back in my pocket, bubba 🙂
I am putting a longer charge on it today to equalize the cells... I will then top off the water, hook up the Promariner to it, perform a load test with the Promariner in line, and see if the Promariner will then initiate a charge...
 
Oh yeah - and your confirmation about the voltage meter switch clears up some head scratching I have had all along... It just seemed that the house battery voltage acted strange...
 
I will also report that to pro mariner. Which charger do you currently have? We are using their Pro Tech I 12volt 20 Amp on our current R25's. They seem to work very well and they support is the best I have ever dealt with. I would rather have a crappy charger someone is willing to stand behind than an expensive one that still fails and the company wont stand behind. For instance, "Charles."

One thing I do know about the Pro Mariner Pro Tech series is you can adjust they way they charge. They do this for us before they ship them out of their factory. I wonder if this didn't happen for you when you received your replacement?
 
I thought the battery charger only has one "sense" line, even though it recharges all three banks. I don't remember if it senses the house (don't think so) or the engine basttery.

I've had the same issue on Island Ranger - the charger wouldn't charge when only the house batteries were low. And I thought a similar thing occurs when the engine is charging the batteries. Isn't that why you use charging relays now as opposed to isolators?

Mac
 
Mac,

I am guessing that you do not have the PRO TECH Series battery charger. If I was to guess, you have the pro sport 20+ which is not a smart charger like the pro tech series. Am I wrong about this?
 
The charger is their 1215i

I have a load on the thruster battery now and it is down to 12.6 volts and I will shortly turn on the Promariner to see if it senses the need for a charge on the thruster battery alone... I have a charger keeping the engine and house batteries fully charged so they won't call for charging when I turn the 110 on.. Will let you know..
 
The Laurie Ann was built in June 2007 and had the ProMariner Sport 20 Amp model. That charger toasted when I swapped out the two 12 volt house batteries for four-6 volt ones. Andrew turned me on to the great tech support guy at ProMariner and I got a smart charger, 40 amp charger that senses each battery bank. Battery performance is much better.

I have found that leaving the battery cut-off switches on will slowly drain the batteries probably because the circuits are energized. We are careful to shutdown all the circuits and the cut-off switches are off.

Our voltage meter switches are: 1-engine battery, 2-thruster battery, 3-house battery

After 3 1/2 years, we just swapped out the engine starting battery.
 
OK, done testing...
Putting a load on the thruster battery that pulls the battery voltage down to 12.3 volts (at the posts) with the charger powered up does not trigger the Protech 1215i to go from float into charge... It just sits there in float... Being in float will eventually charge the battery up once the load is removed, of course, but that is not the action I expect once the battery falls below 12.7 volts...
Turning the 110 AC to the Protech charger off and back on immediately trips it into charge mode...

I will let it go through this charge cycle and then measure the specific gravity of the thruster battery that has been just recharged versus the others to see if it is actually topping off the battery properly...
 
John & Laurie
That is interesting. LENABELL was built about 6 months after your boat and my charger also died shortly after replacing my original batteries (at about 2 1/2 years). After initially leaving charger on most of the time I found that I had to add water very often. During the last year in a covered slip I found that the batterys really needed less charge maintenance and I only add water about every 6 months. I now just turnon the charger if I have not taken the boat out after a 2 week period.
 
This all started when I found the thruster battery drained and dead due to an apparent partial short in the stern thruster motor... And it keeps getting more convoluted...
I have spent time on the telephone the past two days with ProMariner (ProTech) and with Blue Sea (SI ACR)...
I have also spent time on my knees, upside down in the cockpit hatches moving cables, measuring specific gravity of cells, tracing a snake pit of wires, trying to read a VOM out of the corner of my eye while wearing trifocals (arrrgh), looking at manufacturer web pages, and numerous other tasks...

At this point some things are clear...
1. The Protech 1215i charger in my boat is marginal (very) for the task of maintaining the 4 batteries...
I have ordered a Protech 1240i Plus to replace it...
2. The Protech chargers used by Ranger Tug (1215i and 1220i) do not sense the three battery banks separately... There is one sensor line... When it does sense the need for a charge and goes into charge mode it does control the current to each individual battery bank (see #3)...
3. Which brings us to the fly in the ointment... If you have a relay battery combiner and you start the engine, once the start battery recharges enough to reach 13 volts the relay(s) will close making all the batteries into a single bank for continued charging - which is great...

What is not great is when you are running a multibank charger back at the dock and it is attempting to control the charge to each individual bank for optimum charging without boiling the water away, and the combiner relays suddenly lock in and now the three lines of the charger and all the batteries are shorted together... This is what I found to be the situation on my boat when I put a boost charger on the start battery and discovered that I was charging all the batteries in parallel ...

Now, I have the Blue Sea, SI ACR automatic charge combiner relays in my boat... They appear to be a factory install as the heavy cables and fittings on them match the factory cables on the battery Buss bars... What I do know is that the control wiring is incorrectly wired - completely wrong ...
1. There was no Start Interrupt wire to the relays to cause them to open when the engine is being cranked...
2. The pin on the SI ACR that is used to illuminate a remote LED at the helm so the operator knows what the charging situation is, was hard wired to +12 without an LED in series with it... One of my SI ACR relays is now defective and the techs at Blue Sea suspect that is the culprit... That relay will be shipped back on Monday...
3. There was no AC charging relay wired into the SI ACR negative (return) wire to force the relays to remain open while the multi bank AC charger is in use...

Obviously I am correcting these things... And I still have to remove the stern thruster and return it to SidePower for repair...

One: if you have the Blue Sea SI ACR battery combiner relays in your boat take a look at the control wires...
One should be a black wire that is the negative return for the electronics inside of the relay... This is the left pin... If it goes directly to the ground bus and does not have a relay in series with it that is energized by the 110 ac to the charger, you need to add it... See:
http://bluesea.com/viewresource/94

Two: Look at the right pin of the relay... If there is a red wire that goes to a fuse holder and then directly to the +12 Buss, remove that fuse and leave it out... This was incorrectly wired (might be just my boat)... That pin is intended to be the switched ground to illuminate an LED back at the helm that indicates the relay has pulled in... It is not a power pin for the relay - which the installer obviously thought it was...

Three: Look at the middle pin... It needs to have a wire running to the starter solenoid + terminal on the engine... See this: (diagram near the bottom) When the muddle pin on the SI ACR is given a + 12 signal it will open the relay (drop out) so that the battery banks are not combined when cranking...
http://bluesea.com/files/resources/inst ... 170140.pdf

Ans lastly - jeez, I feel like some hack writer being paid by the word, given all the posting I have done... I apologize for being verbose...
 
The acr was wired wrong on mine, in a manner similar to yours, even though I have the 21. Would guess there are others... Sure makes a good difference when it's wired correctly! Works great now. Just took me a long time to discover the problem.
 
Oh yeah, another thing. Andrew said that they don't use the start interrupt, at least on the 21's.
 
Well, one can argue that when you go to start the engine the shore power is not connected (usually) so that the ACR's are not 'likely' to be pulled in when you start cranking the engine, making the SI lead redundant (mostly)... I can see their point on this...

OTOH, it is but a single wire and one fuse from the SI terminal on the ACR to the + lead of the starter solenoid which gives you a measure of protection... In my case the wire and the fuse are already in place (in error) on the LED pins and all I have to do is cut the end loose from the + Buss and extend it to the starter solenoid and move the 2 spade connectors over to the SI blades instead of the LED blades and I am done...

Being that I am deep into correcting of errors on this boat and I am also deep into adding a pair of golf cart batteries to the house bank (starboard locker for balance), I will likely just go ahead and do that minor job since the cockpit is already knee deep in tools, wires, batteries, charger, knee pads, etc...
 
We have never used the start interupt wire on the relays. This was a direct comment from the engineer at blue seas saying it was not needed. It was also stated that the other two pinned wires were only for the led lights on the relay. The relays are automatic. Am I missing something?
 
Andrew,

My ACR relays were wired:
1. With the Negative pin wired directly to ground - the interrupt contact in the negative line controlled by the multi bank charger is missing...
2. With the LED pin wired directly to a +12v buss as though that pin is the power source for the ACR - it is not... And Blue Sea suspects that is the cause of my failed ACR...

3. Whether or not to wire the SI pin on a conventional alternator engine is worthwhile, is open to opinion... I can see your side of that...

I do like the ACR and I have ordered their Add-A-Battery kit for the additional battery bank I am installing...

If my postings have annoyed you, I apologize...
 
I read of your wiring and charger problems with great interest...I'll not go into my issues, but sufice it to say that I share your opinion of Promariner chargers....and don't bother trying to get them to stand behind the product...they simply blame the customer...told me I had shorted it by using dielectric grease on the terminals....My boat was less than two years old, batteries and charger factory installed, never touched by me when It nearly caught fire when the charger burned....I have gone through three complete sets of batteries and replaced the charger with no help or comfort from either Promariner or Ranger Tugs. Seems like it's just my fault for being clear up in Alaska out of sight. Sign me No fan of Promariner, no matter what Andrew thinks. ed
 
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