I'm new,I'm new,I don't know what I'm doing!

[WadmalawJoe]

As I stated I'm new and this forum looked to be quite helpful.
I was given a broken,lifeless electric cart. The charger is supposed to come on automatically when you plug it in? Nothing happens with mine. Is there a way to test it?
There are 6 batteries for the 36 volt system. I am assuming 6 volts each? There was nothing on the label other than amps. All I have is a standard 12 volt car battery type charger. I was hoping I could charge each battery and see what happened.
The batteries look fairly new, a year or so old maybe. I will clean them up more and see if I can find a date.
Any input on where I should start would be helpful.
Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[HotRodCarts]

Welcome to the forum.

You're going to need a digital volt meter so you can check battery voltage. You need around 28 volts for the carts charger to work.

 

[dougmcp]

If you have a 6v switch on your automotive charger you can charge 1 battery at a time. If you are using a 12v only charger you can charge 2 batteries in series at a time.
You do not need to disconnect the batteries from the pack.

 

[rcpd34]

Enjoy the free cart!

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Welcome WadmalawJoe. If I had of known there are so many free carts out there I would have waited on buying one.

We are new too and after cleaning the battery cables ours would not charge either. It turns out the charger has to "sense" so many volts or it will not kick on. It turned out those sensing wires are where the +/- battery cables connect and we had left one off so the Ezgo charger could not 'sense' the battery pack.

After we reconnect it the charger went to working correctly.

 

[WadmalawJoe]

Thanks everyone,

To create a series, I just leave two connected together and hook the charger (12V) to either battery in the pair? I just need to disconnect the positive side from the other 4 batteries right? They can all stay grounded together on the negative side, or do I have that backwards?

I do have a digitial meter, so I will check the voltage with that.

Thanks again!

 

[HotRodCarts]

You don't have to disconnect anything. Just connect the charger to two batteries that are connected in series for 12 volts and charge them. Once those are done move to the next two, then the last two.

 

[WadmalawJoe]

Thanks again everyone,
I have been steadily working my way thru charging 2 at a time via 12 volt charger. In the mean time I took the 36 volt charger to a nearby golf car shop and had them hook it up to a working car and test it to make sure it indeed would kick on and work and it does!
What seems to be taking the longest amount of time is getting the 12 volt charger to acknowledge its connected to the batteries and start charging. What happens is I connect to the batteries red to positive,black to negative, the bare post, not the one thats part of the link to the next battery and the charger acts like its not even connected until about a day later. Then it all of a sudden it is kicked on and charging away. Whats up with that?
My first pair is charged up and is reading 12.30 ish, the 2nd pair, needs a little more, it reads 11.40ish, the last pair that I am trying to get charging is reading 4.40, obviously very low. Each pair started with that low of a reading, approx 2.something off each battery. This last set, if its not charging normal by morning, I think I will change the link around and connect a charged battery with a low battery. So that I get a reading of 8 or 9 volts. ( 6. + 2.) Maybe that will kick the 12 volt charger on and get everything going. What do y'all think?
I am right in the area of the 36 volt charger kicking on (28 volts), I give it a try every now and then.
They all have the same level of water in them, I didn't even need to mess with that, they were all full.

 

[dougmcp]

With readings that low your batteries may charge a little but I bet they are shot and won't hold a charge. Go back an measure the first set you did and see where the voltage is at.

 

[WadmalawJoe]

Its been holding at 12.30 ish. I keep checking them, I was concerned something may draw them back down.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

What kind of charger is your 12v charger? It may have a desulfate mode that is automatic when needed and it is doing that for a day before starting the charge cycle.

Heavy manual chargers are needed to start charging a 2v reading battery. The computerized chargers are great on healthy but just discharged batteries.

Hopefully you can charge/discharge them enough to see if the cart works before you start looking for new batteries. If you have three 12v batteries around that are fair you could make you a 36v bank to at least test the cart in the driveway.

 

[WadmalawJoe]

Interesting about the desulfate mode. I will have to get the make and model of the 12 volt charger and see what manual I can find.
Its just a basic car battery charger with a option of 2 amp trickle charge or 10 amp fast charge/or boost to start. The boost to start thing has never worked like I imagined. I have always just trickle charged my batteries. I bought it new, probably 10-12 years ago.
My father-n-law has a 6/12 volt combo charger, I may go borrow that and try that on a individual battery. It to is a basic charger, it looks about 30 years old at least.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

It is nice to have one of those old 6/12v manual chargers around.

If it had not been for my heavy 40 amp manual charger I could have never got the polarity reversed on a 48 volt bank of 4-12v's. I did them one at a time using the manual charger then when the voltage got up to 2 volts or better I could use the B&D automatic three stage chargers.

Keep us posted if you get the cart to run at all with the old batteries. Some keep cycling them get some useful time out of them over time.

 

[WadmalawJoe]

I hooked up the old 6/12 charger last night. Its the kind that if the positive/negative clips touch each other sparks fly.
If all went well, I should have just one battery left to charge today.
Once that gets charged I will leave the 36 volt charger hooked up over night and then.......
Next will be......... does the car run or does it not ???????
Stay tuned for further developments........

Thanks again!

 

[Gale Hawkins]

That sounds like progress for sure.

Since automatic chargers need to reach a certain voltage before they cut off your plan to let the 36v charger work over night then see if the cart will move is a great plan. Even with damaged batteries some get the function they need from their carts.

Typically a 36v bank will be fully charged in 24 hours so pulling the plug after 24 hours is a safe precaution if the reason it does not shut off is old batteries. One reported after charging them one at a time he only went about 200 feet before the long term parked cart batteries died but after a week or two of charge/discharge he was running around the place on the old batteries.

Looking forward to your next report.

 

[WadmalawJoe]

Yeah! It worked.
I couldn't bear to wait overnight.
I put the 36 volt charger on it at noon time or so and it came on!
I left it on for 5-6 hours it stayed around 14-16 amps, moved around a little bit.
Decided, what the heck, lets check it out. I let my 16 year old run it around for a couple minutes. Then the wife and kids and me all piled on and took it for a spin.
We took turns driving it for 30 minutes or so, making all the neighbors jealous.

We live on a horse farm on a dirt road, so it got a decent work out.
Parked it, plugged it back in, charger went right to 20 amps. I will leave it on for 24 hours or less if charger shuts off.

Thanks again to all!

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Awesome.

I expect those batteries will do you for a while. Let us know your run time after 5-6 discharge/charge cycles.

As a suggestion if it does not automatically shut off shut off after 24 hours and after 2-3 more cycles then leave it connected for 36-48 hours and see if it shuts off perhaps. It should not hurt a thing. I personally just would not want to park one for a month and the charger never shutting off.

Each charge cycle may break down a little more of the old sulfation. Having kids will help insure a lot of charging cycles.