Possesed Bow Thruster - Page 2 - The Hull Truth

Door#3 · 08-24-2008, 07:45 PM

Quote:

PETRAFIED - 8/21/2008 6:56 AM
A dedicated battery bank is not necessary on smaller vessels 45' and under unless you have electronics/electronic controls on the bank, assuming the ah rating is acceptable. Most views of having to put the batts at the thruster have changed since most builders are running a seperate circuit to the relay and not jumping the control circuit off the power circuit. By doing this you are eliminating voltage drop issues at the relay. This was a failure point years ago.

If your failure was due to low voltage I would seperate the circuits. If you feel your bank is not sufficient add a battery but adding a lump of lead in the bow and another charge lead doesn't make sence.

Our boat, an Eastern 35, has one battery bank consisting of 2 8D batteries on an A B switch. Everything runs off that bank. So far this has not been a problem, but there is a noticeable voltage drop when the thruster is run. I suspect that the drop is partly due to the size of the wire that is running from the battery switch forward to the thruster. It is smaller than I would expect given the application and the distance from the switch to the thruster itself. The battery switch is at the lower helm station, just forward of amidships. The thruster does push the bow around pretty well, so I have no issue with that.

Certainly the biggest problem is the fact that the thruster is potentially powered at all times. As part of installing a control circuit I could also increase the size of the wire going forward to the thruster.

My 1st order of business now is to find a new controller / relay box. I'll call Eastern to see if they can get me one quickly. Then I'll need to wire things so that I'm not subject to this problem again. I do wish I knew whether the thruster itself was damaged. If I thought that the mechanics of the thruster were compromised (by the extended operation) I'd wait until the boat is hauled for the winter and replace it with a different brand...

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread.