With help from my friend Victor, got the Victron components wired up together and tested. All seems to be working fine.
We also got the motor re-mounted and connected to the shaft. There is a pretty significant wobble there so we’ll need to go through the alignment process.
In preparation for the new Victron batteries and other components, per plan, I took time to clear out the engine bay. Had to put in a piece of 2×4 to keep PSS bellows pressurized and avoid sinking the boat.
After a lot of thinking (and some $ saving) I’m finally ready to rip out my gel battery pack and jump to Lithium. The AGM batteries are now pretty old and lost quite a bit of capacity and power. The house battery is even older and can’t carry water pump and head flush well without severely dimming the lights.
The propulsion system setup I have now is something like this
I’ll keep the fuse, relay, and all the components of the motor but replace the rest with a Victron-based system so it will look something like this
This new setup gives me a lot of advantages:
More power to the engine
Bigger capacity/range – 300Ah vs. 182Ah
Less weight
Inverter
N2K interface / better software
Simpler system: house and engine off the same battery bank
Will be super fun to put this all in and configure it. Some of the components have already arrived. It’s a pain to get those giant new batteries onboard. Thanks to my dock neighbor Lauren who gave me a hand.