Mwills98 said:
I repowered to a four stroke and thinking of moving my batteries from the transom to the two storage areas in the cabin to better balance out the added weight of the four. Never use the forward storage as stuff will just get mildewed. Has anyone done this? Pretty simple or more involved than I think, moving battery switch, grounds etc?
Some things to consider with a move like that.
First of all, which 200 did you install, the 6 cyl or the inline 4?
If the later, the weight should be about the same as a 2S.
To move the batteries, you would have to relocate the battery switch, not too bad a job for the switch itself.
Relocate the main circuit breaker. A bit of a pain but the breaker has to be close to the batteries. That said, I am not sure how far apart the batteries are allowed to be to meet ABYC regs for disconnect placement.
The battery cables would most likely need to up sized to account for the extra length to the motor. That might be a real pain. In addition running the large battery cables between the two forward lockers will be an issue.
The forward section of the hull takes a lot more pounding than the stern. The batteries will therefore also take a bigger beating and at a minimum will need fairly strong holddowns. The original strap approach is out of the question.
Of course, you would have to back run the feed for the bilge pump and relocate the inline fuse.
If there was an oil tank in the port aft locker, you may get better balance by relocating one battery to that side. Some of my comments above still would apply.
One other potential issue is that there will be a lot more current running through the rigging tube even when running since the battery charge from the alternator now runs the length of the deck. The extra magnetic field 'might' cause issues with some electronics like transducers that run in the same tube. It may not be an issue at all but there isn't a good way that I know of to know before hand.
