Hi There,
I decided I wanted to try to put a trolling motor on my kayak and control speed and direction with a PWM. I'm running into a bit of a problem and for the life of me, i can't figure out what the issue is. I'm hoping someone on here may have seen a similar issue before and can help point me in the right direction.
I have the battery, trolling motor and PWM all hooked up. I've created a wiring harness to extend the PWM controls to a smaller "remote" box away from the PWM so that I can limit the length of wire between the battery and the trolling motor so I can use 10 AWG with limited voltage drop. I'm using a Newport Vessels 55lb thrust kayak trolling motor with a VMAX 85 AH deep cycle marine battery.
The PWM controls consist of a 3 way (forward, neutral, reverse), polarity reversing switch and a potentiometer knob to control speed. When I flip the switch to forward and increase the speed knob, the trolling motor kicks on and works as intended. I flip the switch into reverse mode, and nothing happens. If I manually reverse the power and ground wire of the motor at the PWM and test again, I get reverse working as it should, and no forward. It seems the like 3 way polarity reversing switch isn't working.
Here's what I've tried / tested so far:
1. I've done continuity testing across the 3 wires in the switch and they all have good connection from one end to the other (all the way to the back of the pins on the PWM board and to the solder joints on the switch)
2. I've tested multiple switches
3. I've tested multiple PWM units / controllers
4. I've bypassed the speed / direction controls in the trolling motor head and wired directly to the motor itself
5. I've manually reversed the trolling motor power / ground wire at the PWM to make sure the trolling motor would run in forward and reverse directions
at this point, the only thing I can think is that maybe BOTH of the 3 way switches are bad ? I have more switches coming from amazon today to test that theory, but if anyone has any other ideas I can try, please let me know.
Thanks in advance!
