Lightning!!!

A few trees in my back yard and neighbors yard got nailed with lighting last evening. We lost our TV, surround sound and cable box I had my Noco Gen 2 on board battery charger plugged into a house receptical, and after investigating it looks like one of the banks is shot. This charger has a red (charging, diagnosing, etc.) and a green (charged/healthy) light for each bank. The one bank that connects to my starting batterry which houses all my accessories and starting power seems to be working fine. My other bank that connects to my trolling motor battery won't light up at all. I pluged in my trolling motor and it works fine, so the battery seems OK. The fuse on that bank is also in tact. I'm guessing the power surge got to the charger and fried that bank? Whats the best way to test my charger to see if it's working?

I have one speaker that's not working, but I've had to re-wire them before due to using crappy wire for the speaker connections. Thinking this just may be coincedence. Everything else seems to be working fine. All my accesories and control panel seem good to go. I turned everything on just to be sure. I turned the motor over and it wants to start right up. Even tested the choke and I can hear the solenoid opening up/engaging. Anything else I can/should check on the motor? Just worried something like the power pack or other electrical piece got effected. This, is obviously, my biggest concern. It's a 1994 Johnson 50/35 jet freshly rebuilt back in September. I plan to take it out on Sunday to do some fishing, but if I can ease my mind by testing anything else on it before I take it out, I'd like to do that. If the worst I got out of it was a fried battery charger, I won't complain!!

Here are a few pics of the trees. Blew bark and chunks of the trees a good 30-40 yards across my backyard!! Crazy.

Sounds/looks like you were lucky, I don't have any advice for testing your stuff but I see 4 Yellow Poplar trees including the one that got popped and another that also has a split/hollow trunk in the second pic. I would recommend cutting them all down before they get huge if they are close enough to fall on your house or boat/pool/outbuildings. They grow quickly and huge and are prone to internal rot/hollowing and being blown down or loosing their tops.They also drop branches often, and a bunch of junk each year when they bloom.

Thanks!! Yes, could have been MUCH worse. And yes, yellow poplar. I have them all throughout my back yard. They are already quite big. I wouldn't be lucky enough to have one fall on my pool anyway. It leaks rather bad, and is in need of a new liner.

Good news is I tested both my batteries and they are fine. The #1 bank on my battery charger, however, isn't. Multimeter read 12.83-12.84 for both batteries with the charger unplugged. When plugged in battery on bank #2 reads 13.?? (don't remember the exact number) but it's showing that bank is working. When I check the battery on bank #1 with the charger plugged in it still reads 12.83, showing that bank isn't working. Other good thing is both fuses going from charger to battery are in tact. To me that means the surge went into my house, through the extension cord, into the charger killing bank #1 and stopped there. If it kept going I would think it would have killed bank #2, damaged my batteries or other accessories. If that's the worst of it, I'll be happy. I'll find out for sure on Sunday when I take her out [-o<

Oh man, I've been through this! In the 90's I lived in VT on the top of a mountain and we got nailed by lightning and lost pretty much everything plugged into the wall. TV, microwave, fridge, even a hair dryer my wife had plugged in. Got a pretty healthy insurance check for it. I will let you know that the tress we had in our yard, the ones that got nailed by lightning like yours, all died within 3 years. Hope your experience won't be the same.

Thanks man!! It was rather random what the power surge took out. I had a few other things plugged into the same outlet as my TV, and those things weren't effected. My boat gets plugged into an outlet in my rec room. On the same circuit are other outlets with a refrigerator, freezer, electric dog fence, computer, router and TV plugged in. Non of those were effected. Electricty is a crazy thing!!!

During the Lightening storms I un-plug all the antenna cables. All the electricity to our Computers.

BigTerp said:

Thanks man!! It was rather random what the power surge took out. I had a few other things plugged into the same outlet as my TV, and those things weren't effected. My boat gets plugged into an outlet in my rec room. On the same circuit are other outlets with a refrigerator, freezer, electric dog fence, computer, router and TV plugged in. Non of those were effected. Electricty is a crazy thing!!!

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Surprises me about the dog fence. If it we get lightning in the next county, mine goes out.

Had it get my tv one time too, turns out it was just an internal fuse. You may want to check it out.