Trolling motor batteries

[gb1234]

Thanks for all the replies.
I found out Li Time handles the warranty for Ampere Time. So they are supposed to ship me a new battery once they receive mine. And I'll ship mine once they mail me the label. They're mailing that now after several emails - which took 18 hours between replies.
I'll be off the water for maybe a couple weeks but at least it won't cost me anything. At least that's the plan. We'll see how it turns out. Meanwhile, I will probably never know what happened to my battery or if I could have prevented it. Should I not have laid it on its side? Should I have disconnected them from their series connection while charging? It remains a mystery.
While waiting for Support to reply, I looked up the brands mentioned here, plus a few others. These are all 100 Ah. I tried to compare apples to apples but some brands don't make them without Bluetooth or without heaters. Others won't tell you if they have a waterproof rating. One of these is actually "not in stock" at the moment.

It's amazing how much the prices vary. Maybe some are built better but you wouldn't know it by their web sites. Maybe some have better service, but they mostly look the same on paper.
Studying LiFePO4 more these past few days, I'm shocked that the individual cells inside can so easily become unbalanced, preventing full charge and full usage. I think that's what happened to my Ampere Time. One of the brands above includes a balancing circuit. However, it doesn't say whether it is passive or active. In general, you would have to use a heat gun to open the battery case, and use balancing circuits and a special charger to rebalance cells. It takes hours and leaves your battery less waterproof and certainly out of warranty.
LiFePO4 provides much more power than lead - and I use it all when I troll - but there's a lot to be said for the simplicity of lead. Hopefully the internal circuitry of LiFePO4 will improve. Certainly, if I had to do it all over again, I would get a model with Bluetooth monitoring. Then at least I would know for sure if the cells are out of balance, not that there is anything I could do about it.