Voltage alarm on 2010 242 ls

[Ronnie]

Last weekend I took my boat out for the first time this year. At the end of the day, about 25 of 30 miles in, I got a voltage alarm on the port engine guage. I turned the engines off and restarted them and the alarm was gone. About 3 miles later the alarm went off again. This time I switched to emergency parallel/combine mode and made it back to the trailer without any alarms sounding. When the alarm did sound the port engine went into safe mode (rpms limited to 3k).

fast forward to today and all of my batteries passed the load test conducted by my local interstate battery store. The tech went on to say that the start battery is rated at 800 CCA but was putting out 1,200 CCA (the battery is 5 years old and the tech thinks I will get another 3 to 5 years use out of it). The day the alarm was going off the guages said the batteries were at 14.3 and 13.8 volts.
I put a switch on the dvsr lead last season and forgot to switch it on when I was boating last weekend. Did this cause the voltage alarm? That is, it possible that I overcharged the start battery? Will switching the dvsr lead (completing the circuit to the negative terminal on the batteries) prevent the alarm from going off in the future?

I don’t have any issues with buying a new start and/or house battery but don’t want to do so if it’s not going to resolve my problem so any feedback would be appreciated. I should mention that I have a deep cycle house battery that tested out fine at the battery store earlier today. See pic.

 

[biffdotorg]

Ronnie, is it worth swapping the two batteries for the short term to see if you can replicate the problem wired the same way?

I have thought of doing that, as I know my starting battery is way less taxed than my house battery. As I put in a matching pair of batteries 3 seasons ago, and never pulled them for storage.

Good luck!

 

[GiddYupJoe]

@Ronnie This happened to my 2010 also. My batteries passed the test as good too but I wanted to replace them with AGM deep cycles anyway so I did. After that I never had any issue again. Say a couple years before I sold the boat.

 

[Ronnie]

@Ronnie This happened to my 2010 also. My batteries passed the test as good too but I wanted to replace them with AGM deep cycles anyway so I did. After that I never had any issue again. Say a couple years before I sold the boat.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve had a low aux voltage alarm in the past but that disappeared after I replaced the stock batteries with agms. It came back after installing a lot of new electronics but went away again after I replaced the Agm start battery with an agm deep cycle model.
The new alarm was different in that it didn’t indicate low voltage nor aux. more over the port engine went into safe mode (wouldn’t spin over 3k rpm).

Currently my plan is to switch the batteries as @biffdotorg suggested, turn on and leave on the dvsr connection (I may just remove the switch completely) and see if the problem comes back. Not the way I prefer to handle this but I don’t want to replace a battery or both of them if doing so won’t stop the alarm from coming back.

 

[GiddYupJoe]

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve had a low aux voltage alarm in the past but that disappeared after I replaced the stock batteries with agms. It came back after installing a lot of new electronics but went away again after I replaced the Agm start battery with an agm deep cycle model.
The new alarm was different in that it didn’t indicate low voltage nor aux. more over the port engine went into safe mode (wouldn’t spin over 3k rpm).

Currently my plan is to switch the batteries as @biffdotorg suggested, turn on and leave on the dvsr connection (I may just remove the switch completely) and see if the problem comes back. Not the way I prefer to handle this but I don’t want to replace a battery or both of them if doing so won’t stop the alarm from coming back.

Sorry @Ronnie I misread your post then! Good luck. Hope all is well! Cheers.

 

[Ronnie]

No apology necessary, this is a first for me and I had a hard time describing the problem. As usual, I’m sure it’s nothing that throwing time and money at can’t fix.