Lithium ion battery's

Thanks!  I want to get the Li batteries next spring.  This is my 4th year running West Marine AGM batteries and they've been excellent.  I have an 80# Terrova on 1675 Lund, so you're pulling a much bigger rig than I am.

I have a 1875 Lund Crossover.  Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, but I used it for steering autopilot more so than speed.  I use my kicker for propulsion, I was pulling 4 divers, 2 riggers, and 2 boards at 2.2-2.6mph both into and with the wind and currents.  My previous batteries were smaller group 27 flooded acid and they would have been down to about 25% capacity remaining after that same amount of time.  They also would have gotten weaker, where I have to bump up the prop speed to account for the difference.  These new batteries have no drop off until they are dead.

I will have to test trolling with just the trolling motor alone once. I don't typically do that unless its springtime but I should be able to find out quickly with the app how many amps its drawing.  At the end of the day, that is the main info I wanted.  If you know the draw, its easy math to figure out run time.

I did fish with spot lock the other day and it was using about 1% of battery per hour.  Was not crazy windy out though, average day I would say.  I was sitting in mild current though too.

lakeshiner - I'm curious about the size of your boat, current and wind when you were trolling.  Do you know what your speed was?

I received my batteries and did the first test with them this past weekend.  My review to this point would be great, I just hope they last as long as advertised.  I used my Terrova 24 volt trolling motor auto-pilot on a 4.5 prop speed setting for 6 hours and the batteries read 65% when I was done.  

When I first received the batteries, they did nothing.  Literally nothing, they were sleeping.  My charger is supposed to wake lithium batteries so I plugged it in and after a few seconds the batteries were on.  So that part of the charger worked as advertised.  They came 50% charged.  At that point I let the charger do its thing and the charger recognized when they were fully charged and went into maintenance mode.  The batteries themselves then changed to 'standby' mode.

I was using the app for the batteries to read their statuses.  You can see different things like amperage output, voltage, capacity remaining, etc.  It also tells you how many times you cycled the battery.  Seemed to work fine, I just had to click the blue tooth button for each battery as it only connects to 1 at a time.  You can also label the batteries so I just called mine TM-Right, TM-Left.  

They were far lighter too, very easy to move around.  Overall I'm happy, like I said I just hope they last 10 years.

Li Time 2 pack

I have a Minn Kota Precision 3 bank charger now.  You can set battery type for each bank - Flooded acid, AGM, or Lithium.  Supposedly it will also wake Lithium batteries.

Still waiting to actually try it though so can't say how well it will work yet.

lakeshiner - What charger are you going to use on the Li Time batteries?

I decided to buy some LiFePo4 batteries and ended up going with Li Time.  They have various options for 100ah but I went with their 'trolling motor' series because they are group 31 size and will fit in my battery box without sliding around.  I got the blue tooth enabled ones, they have a 5% off going on right now for Prime Days sale.  Came out to around $300 a battery.  Hopefully they last 10 years like is claimed.....

Will see what happens I guess, I just know I tend to drain my flooded acid batteries down way beyond 50% when salmon trolling and that's not good for them.  Reviews and youtube videos seemed to say good things.

Check out https://ampedoutdoors.com/ They are out of Wisconsin and never heard anything bad about them.

Jabberwalker
Thanks for the clarifications, it's been a minute or two since I was digging into the new stuff. That said, still happy with my US assembled batts. The also offer a veteran discount, might be for LEO/EMS too.

One of the problems when people talk about lithium batts burning up is the quality of the assembly.

Don't confuse Lithium-Ion batteries with LiFePo4's. Phosphate-based batteries offer superior chemical and mechanical structure that does not overheat to unsafe levels. Thus, providing an increase in safety over lithium-ion batteries made with other cathode materials. When subjected to hazardous events, such as collision or short-circuiting, they won’t explode or catch fire, significantly reducing any chance of harm. It’s also worth mentioning, LiFePO4 batteries are non-toxic, non-contaminating and contain no rare earth metals.

All the "components" of a lithium battery are made in China. Dakota Lithium batteries are also assembled in China. Battle Born (Reno, Nevada) batteries are ASSEMBLED in the US in Reno. One of the problems when people talk about lithium batts burning up is the quality of the assembly. Battle Born are a very good build quality and have great customer service with everything coming from Reno. Compare Dakotas to Battle Born. I've had two 12V BB's for three years now, no issues, very happy.

Last year, I bought a 20ah lithium battery from Amazon (Vestwoods, I think) for $50-$60.  I used it to strictly run 2 Garmin 93 units.  It worked great and it held up well for a few days of fishing.  My voltage always looked good, but I never ran it until I was out of juice.  When open water was done, I made a power box with usb and 12v outlets and used it all winter ice fishing.  Worked great.

I guess we'll see how many years I get out it, but so far it seems like a decent buy.

The cells in every lithium iron phosphate battery are all made in China.  

I will point out that you can buy cheap lithiums for about 1/3 the cost of the Dakotas.  So if you get 4 years out of them, you are ahead.  And the construction of many of them is equal or better, in my opinion.