# Battery



## Sea Rover (Jan 15, 2008)

Can I see a few pics of how you set up a battery on your yak???

Thinking about adding a few extras like a fish finder and LED lighting. :thumbup:


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## sureicanfish (Sep 30, 2007)

heres mine; my solutions never seem popular, i guess cuz they involve a little riggenometry lol, but this one too was FREE. 

I upgraded my dewalt tools to new 20V so i had a couple good 18V batteries left, 18V is too much for my lowrance dsi so i opened the battery pack which is made up of a bunch of 1.3V cells. cut a few out (they're soldered together with thin metal strips, nothing crazy) to equal a 15V charge, then wired the loop back together with a piece of electrical wire, taped it all up and put the pack back together. then i cut out a piece of foam block for the battery to sit in and threw a velcro strap around it. the whole thing just wedges in between two scupper holes/supports inside my tarpon 160 and doesnt budge. a recent 4.5-5hr trip drew the battery down to 14V. When i get home i just throw it on the charger and in 30 mins its ready to go again. All the work can be bypassed if you already have a 12V or 14.4V battery, of course, but i didn't:thumbsup:


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## Jay39833 (Jan 2, 2012)

Now that is some high-tech fancy ass redneckafying right there!


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## Sea Rover (Jan 15, 2008)

I like it! I am shocked at how long it will run the fish finder!!!

Something like this should run my fish finder and a few LED lights pretty long then

http://www.batteriesplus.com/produc...ad-Acid-Batteries/102638-Power-Sonic/12V.aspx


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## sureicanfish (Sep 30, 2007)

i was surprised too, mind you its the 4x dsi, not a huge side-scan laser beam touch screen spaceship helm, but it works awesome. the drill battery is pretty light-weight too. my last setup was an old motorcycle battery because it was laying around, same goes for my new setup.


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## Jay39833 (Jan 2, 2012)

A lot of people use the automatic deer feeder batteries from Academy that cost $22. I believe they are 7 amp hours. I have also seen someone show a link to an automatic gate opener battery from Home Depot that supposedly works good. I am currently in search of a small plastic box not much bigger than the battery so I can keep it dry in there. I use the academy battery and have sunk my kayak with the battery in a bag that filled up with water. After cleaning the corrosion off the thing works fine, so im not worried about sealing the box I put it in. So far Office Depot has about the best selection of small plastic boxes with lids that I have found. 

As for the led lighting, I got some waterproof strips of 12 volt leds off of ebay for cheap and they are incredibly bright and don't draw much juice. They did break on my maiden voyage, but it was my fault. I zip tied them to a pvc pole in such a manner that allowed the battery to shift and pull the wiring off the two terminals on the led strip. Soldered a thicker wire in place, covered in silicone and it works great again! I also dropped these lights into the water shortly after launching and they still worked great, so they definitely are water proof! I ended up buying more lights from eBay because I liked them so much, I even got a 15 foot strip of green I want to put under my kayak to attract fish! Here is a link to one of the last ones I bought. Let me know if it doesnt show up, I don't know if it will for an old bid. 

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=360698136984


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## yakster (Jul 2, 2013)

You want a Sealed Lead Acid battery, preferably 12v dc and something around 7 amp hours. Find a place preferably on the centerline of the boat where you can secure one of those dry bags you can find in the camping section of any dept store. The key to the sealed lead acid cell battery is that it does not matter if it gets wet or not, or if its turned upside down a million times it's sealed from the outside environment. Make sure you put some 18 guage AMP female disconnects on your fish finder wires and also some silicon gel on the battery leads to prevent corrosion build up


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## zimm (Jul 29, 2013)

*Battery box*

Here are my setups for my batteries, 6v5ah for my live well and a 12v9ah for the fish finder. Both bought at Batteries plus. The waterproof boxes came from Wallyworld, camping section. Water resistant connectors came from Autozone, there for a trailer. Water proof fuse holder West Marine, and rubber grommets for the wiring to come through came from Lowes.


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## SaltWaterBuck (Sep 2, 2013)

zimm said:


> Here are my setups for my batteries, 6v5ah for my live well and a 12v9ah for the fish finder. Both bought at Batteries plus. The waterproof boxes came from Wallyworld, camping section. Water resistant connectors came from Autozone, there for a trailer. Water proof fuse holder West Marine, and rubber grommets for the wiring to come through came from Lowes.


 those are slick how much do you have invested in them ??? right now i run two 6v raovac lantern batteries $5 in a series they run me good a ran it for 8hrs over the weekend and theyre still goin strong but when they die thats that no recharge just buy new batteries im sure thatll get old quick


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## zimm (Jul 29, 2013)

Wow sorry for the ridiculously late reply! The big battery plus housing and wiring cost around $45 small was around $35


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## zimm (Jul 29, 2013)

Also the bigger battery has never needed to be recharged, about 40+ hrs running my fish finder.


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## Blake R. (Mar 17, 2009)

Anyone ever rigged up a solar panel to keep a charge on the water?


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