Club Car Battery's Lose Charge

Hey all and good morning. The batteries in my 1990 Club Cart 36v seems to lose charge in a couple days. New battery's. Any suggestions? Thanks.
 

HotRodCarts

Cartaholic
Do you have any 12 volt accessories on the golf cart? Have you checked the batteries with a volt meter to see if they are actually losing voltage after sitting? What is the golf cart doing that makes you think the batteries are losing the charge?
 
Sorry I'm late responding. I checked battery voltage---37.5 volts. The cart just barely creeps F/R. On jack the wheels turn but do seem slow. It did this once before and I found a bad connection They all seem good
 
Just to add, when connect charger the meter will almost peg to 30 amps. Actually right at 25. Then you can almost watch it drop to 0 in about 7 or 8 minutes. I did this twice after charging to 0, I would creep it out backwards of garage and go forward a couple time the cart just barely moving. I tested solenoid and no voltage drop when accelerator depressed... Looks to me a bad motor?
 

Rstaley

Cartaholic
The important thing is what is the voltage of the battery pack when the cart is creeping along. I've have had new batteries fail before, where the pack voltage would looked ok until it was loaded. I’d put voltmeter across the battery pack and watch it while driving the cart .Another thing is that if there was a “draw’ on the batteries when not being driven to discharge the batteries that quickly, there would have to be enough current being drawn that if you disconnected a wire between the batteries (while it was just sitting there) and reconnected it, there would be spark. Be sure that you don’t have one of the batteries wired in backwards. I know that sounds stupid, but with new fresh batteries that haven’t been cycled, (fresh off of the charger) they can make the pack voltage look ok until a load is applied. The motor wouldn't discharge the batteries when not in use.
 
Good morning. Ik, I after setting over night battery pack voltage at 38 volt. Jacked up put volt meter on battery pack and depressed accelerator, voltage dropped .2 or .3 to 37.7. Back wheels seemed to turn good or freely wide open. I then lowered on garage floor and cart still barely moves...I guess I'll make up some long leads to my volt meter and see what battery voltage is with a load? Any help with this..thanks.
 

Rstaley

Cartaholic
Yes. That is the best way to really see what is happening with the battery pack under normal usage. I just clip the – lead of a multimeter on to B- (the lowest point in the battery pack) and the + lead to B+ (the highest point in the battery pack) and then rout the leads so that you can observe the meter as you drive the cart. With the voltages you are getting now, I’d be more prone to think that you might have another issue. I had the same problem myself once, and it ended up that I had put one of the wires that come off of the battery pack and goes other components in the wrong place. The way I had it wired, the battery pack was getting charged ok, but the motor wasn’t seeing the whole pack’s supply. It was trying to run on just a couple of batteries. Maybe you could lift the seat and take some pictures of the top of the battery pack and the F/R switch and the speed controller (whatever kind it has) and post them here on the forum. One of us should be able to shed more light on the issue.
 

Rstaley

Cartaholic
That makes it even easier, when you are changing things over to accommodate the new set up (6-6s) to get something wrong. As you look at the battery pack you will see some heavy wires (probably 6 gauge). These wires do two things. Five of them connect the batteries in a series con figuration going from – to +, - to +, - to +, - to +, - to +. The first – is called B- and the top + is the B+. They should add up to around 38 volts. But there are two more that take off and go to the motor and its reversing and speed control circuitry. That’s the two I’m suspicious of. They must come off of B- and B+, not from anywhere else in the series string. Only B+ and B- will have two of the heavy wires on each of them.
 
The series is correct. The 2 leads you are talking about are on the positive post on battery 1 and the positive post on battery 2. They both go to the F/R switch.
 
I'll take that back..this is set up as starting with pos post on #1. Now I'm not sure how to set up batteries. Can you advise me on this? Thanks.
 
This setup has batteries in series. It has #1 positive post with a lead to f/R switch. The #2 battery positive post to the forward and reverse switch.
 
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