Looking at lithium for my canoe because of weight and size. Dakota is my #1 pick as of now but I'm hearing good things about the much cheaper LiTime. What do y'all use in your watercraft, recommendations? Thanks!

I recommend you get a good battery so you can take me fishing for bowfin.

Keith

If I was going to replace my trolling motor batteries, it would be Litime.

I just put a 100ah WattCycle in my camper and it's awesome. $150

Lol Keith, we're gonna go! As soon as the flooding goes down expect a call buddy!

I have a LiTime. No problems with it. It powered my deer blind for a year or more. But its no longer in my deer blind solar system because of its lack of low temp protection. I got a couple Weize with low temp cutoff and self heating. The LiTime is now in a self powered reciever hitch winch that gets used occasionally. Its done well for that.

No matter which one you end up with, here's some advice: If you think the battery is failed, don't give up on it too soon.
The BMSs in the Weize batteries got mad last winter and I thought they both failed. They wouldn't accept any charge and would drop to the cutoff voltage when trying to take any power from them. After a few cycles of watching voltage go from low to high with no meaningful current flowing either direction I thought they were toast. But after letting them rest a while, then slowing raising the voltage with a variable DC power supply I coaxed them into behaving again. Once they calmed down and played nice, they accepted a lot of power/ They were nearly fully discharged. They've been working great for months since then.

My guess of what happened is that the solar charge controler's high disconnect voltage was too low. They'd get fully charged, or nearly so. But the voltage was not pushed high enough to top balance the cells. So over time they fell out of balance and upset the BMS. Once they started behaving again I pushed them up to a higher voltage and held it there. I've also raised the high voltage setting on the charge controller.

I have 2 LiTime 12V 100AH in my boat for trolling. No problems for 3 years.

Litime are good, I have watt cycle and like them for the trolling motor batteries and power queen for the electronics in my boat. Several guys in my bass club have Litime and have had no problems but if you are into tournaments watt cycle has bonus money in certain tournament trails so I went with them.

if these boat batteries are anything like tool batteries , cold is an issue , and they have a bunch of electronics in them to control charge , heat and output

I had a Rigid 4Ah battery for my impact that I tied to charge cold the safety took over and then it would not charge

I had to open it up and put a little jumper across 2 points to reset the protection circuit after letting it warm up now it charges again.

it appears they do here is a video on how to reset BMS on a Dakota

make sure you get those batteries fully charged before winter and put the batteries in a place they won't freeze

it dies sound like the factory Dakota charger can reset and charge them again

So do you have to have a different charger for the lithium 12v batteries, a regular one won't work?

Thanks Jeff. I look forward to it.

Keith

As far as I know, Yes you do. I went with a same brand name as my batteries . I was going to put a couple in my camper, but I didn’t want to mess with the Converter.

that answer is Yes and NO

No if you start with a fully charged Dakota battery and you never run it down to nothing or near nothing say you have an outboard and a trolling motor and the alternator on your outboard is in good shape it will just charge it back up as long as it basically has enough power to start the outboard.

however if you use it like a mobility scooter for the lake and you have only a trolling motor and a set of emergency oars and you had to row the last 100 yards to the boat ramp or it got cold below freezing and you tried to charge it on your regilar charger before you let it warm up , Yes

so normal day to day is a NO there is a charge controller built into the battery to keep it from over charge. aka BMS battery management system

any Low voltage , run down , got cold , produced a fault , the Dakota charger can talk with the circuit in the battery to possibly revive it.

this is the info for the Dakota , consult the manual for any other manufacturer

but I expect most that are intended to be used with an outboard will take a normal charge while your outboard is running.

^^ this


I got dedicated LiFePO4 charger for my dad for his trolling battery.

For me, I very much prefer a variable DC power supply, like this. I can set it to what I want and see exactly what is happening (both the voltage and current). At a little over 14v, if 100ah LiFePO4 battery will only accept an amp or so, its full. So set it to 14.4 or 14.5v and leave it on till the current drops. For rare situations like the BMS freaking out about something (like cells out of balance) its very helpful to see voltage and currrent at the same time.

…. Maybe that’s what happened to Boco

… his trolling motor ran out of battery lol

Kansas, I have a DC power supply like the one in the link you provided, I use it for my electrolysis tank to strip cast iron. So, I can use that for the LiFeP04 battery? If so, that would be awesome! If ya can't tell I'm not to savvy with electronics lol. I think I'm gonna go with the LiTime battery for my canoe and a little boondocking!

Yes. LiTime's charge recommendations are here. The most relevant part for using a variable DC power supply is this:


So set the DC power supply to between 14.2 and 14.6. I'd go 14.4 - 14.6. Assuming its a 100ah battery, and your DC supply is 5a or 10a, set the current to maximum. The battery will accept the max current from your littile power supply until its fuly charged. Once the current drops off to an amp or so you can consider it done. That's the basics.


If you're charging a smaller battery (like 5ah), you should not go over 1C. That means a 5 amp-hour battery shouldn't be charged at a rate of over 5 amps (the manual might say a bit higher or lower, but it will be close to 1c). But you're probably looking at a 100 amp hour battery, and your power supply is probably 5a or 10a, so you're WAY under the current that the battery will happily handle. So set the power supply to max current current - but be careful on the voltage! If you crank the voltage up to high (maybe 16v or so?), you risk damaging the battery. If you connect the polarity wrong the battery won't care, but it will fry your DC power supply in an instant.

Thanks a ton Kansas, Pete and everyone, I appreciate it. I think I would need to get beefier cables(the ones that came with mine are super cheap) for my DC power supply and me being me will probably mess something up so I'll probably go ahead and buy the dedicated charger for the battery. I am gonna go with the 12v 100ah group 31 battery. 24lbs is gonna be a treat!

Check out Dr. Prepare 100ah mini. $159

Plain no

I have a 100AH Group 24... Supposed to do the same as a big battery but smaller and weighs in a tad under 20. I think I paid a tad over 200 for it a little over a year ago.... Sure beats the old 50 some pound lead acid...