[C320-list] C320-list Digest, Vol 4149, Issue 2

[Jack Brennan]

If the start battery is fully charged, I would bet money on it being a faulty ground connection. I can’t give a good technical explanation, but I have dealt with bad ground connections before. That’s what it looks like.

On my four-battery bank (three house and one start), all of the negative posts are connected to each other, and the last battery has a thick cable that runs to the main negative buss behind the circuit breaker panel.

You have four golf-cart batteries, presumably wired in series to get to 12 volts and connected to the main negative buss. (How did you fit those in the starboard settee, anyway?) What about the start battery? Where does its negative cable go? It should somehow connect to the negative on the house bank, or at least to the main negative buss.

YMMV, but I can easily start my 3GM30 with one fully charged Interstate group 24, deep cycle battery. It was the same with the Yanmar 2GM20 on my old Bristol 30. You can run into trouble with a significantly discharged battery.

One last note is that it can be tricky mixing AGM with flooded lead acid batteries due to charging issues. They require different voltages with 110-volt chargers and solar controllers. Some or many chargers only allow you to set one battery type.

Jack Brennan
Sonas, 1998 Catalina 320
Tierra Verde, Fl.




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