Duffy Electric boats....?

Thanks for the offer, I just literally got home from flying back from Harbor Island. One of these days I'll take you up for it.

Hello all,
I just found this forum about Duffy boats. Im looking for some help getting my new project in the water. I picked up a 1981 Duffy Edison?? for a couple dollars. Its very clean but needs new batteries and some other small fixes. Hers a photo, please don't mind my makeshift boat stands, I have since reinforced the boat with bigger safer stands.

First off, I have (6) 6 volt batteries. Im not sure of the DC motor though. The motor is a GE and the plate says 24/36/36. Can anyone help me out understanding if it is a 24 or 36?

Also, I have the original controller. How do I upgrade it? Or do I even need to?

Thanks, Looking forward to your replies!

You should be able to tell the voltage by looking at the battery cables. Are they ALL parallel then you have 36 volts. If some are parallel and some series than probably 24, but if 24 I would guess they'd either use 4 or 8 12 volt batteries. 6-6 volt batteries probably means 36 volts.

Lets see a photo of your motor bay !

Yea, I know its a challenging investment but I picked up the boat for under 1k and its in really good shape considering its a little dirty. The previous owner said the boat worked great up to the day he parked it in a slip for a year. The boat sat in a slip with no use for a year.

The batteries need to be replaced although they have a little charge in them. I need to get some batteries in there just to figure everything out. The wiring worries me because I don't know much about wiring the switch and 6 volt series/parallel ..

My big question is, what is the voltage of this motor? 24 or 36?

OK where do I start on this project? I know the boat needs paint but I want to see the propeller move before I get painting! Guess Im going battery shopping. Any suggestions?

Yes, this might be true. I'll get a better photo of the wiring.. here it is
Seems the middle bank is not wired like the left and right. Also not the battery orientation is not the same. some are flipped opposite.

Note: there are 4 black wires leaving the battery bay to the switch/motor

How do you know the batteries are bad ? Get a hydrometer and check every cell of every battery, be sure they are filled corrected with distilled water.I would start there and then more to the motor bay...hows the belt...what about brushes in the motor ? Does the stuffing box need to be repacked ? Hows the forward bearing. I would use a corrosion inhibator on all the connections.

Thanks. 4 of the batteries show about 6 volts, the other 2 are just about dead (1 volt). I filled all of them with water, each had just about no water in them

All have been on the charger also

It works! Although the batteries are extremely low
View My Video

You know that you should not run it dry very much at all.....yes ? You can burn up the packing gland material .

Thank you very much for the info. This should be a fun project and I'll post my progress here. Appreciate the advice!

Good luck ! I just went thru the same thing with a 1999. I was amazed at the wierd sounds a worn and glazed belt made. I one point I swore I had a bad bearing , I never would of guessed it was a belt. One trick the factory taught me is to spray a bit of water on the belt, if the noise stops its belt related.

If all of the batteries are wired in parallel, the output would be 6 volts assuming all batteries are fully charged. To get 36 volts, they have to be wired in series.