Golf Cart Batteries won't charge

[williep]

I have a 2002 club car that I had stored in the garage since Jan 1. I just returned here and tried to charge the cart but nothing happened. I checked the batteries and 2 of them read about 3 volts and 4 of them read about 1 volt. Also they were all almost dry. I replaced the water but that's not going to help if the voltage is so low. I guess my question is, can they be recharged 1 at a time and then as a unit? The guy I bought the house and cart from had a problem in 2008 and had them reboosted by KH Golf Carts and they worked OK since then. ( I found the receipt ) Also is KH a good company or is there a better place ( not overly expensive ) to get it fixed?
Thanks for any info Bill from Duval
PS. How could that happen when I had the run tow swiitch in the tow position? I thought that disconnects the batteries?

[ajbrown]

First off, I would :pray: (finally got to use that smiley)

They may be salvageable, they may not. You have to get the collective pack up to 36 volts to get the charger to kick on (assuming 6-8 volt batteries). You can charge one at a time with a 12 volt car charger. When I did this I set the charger on a low amperage and manual.

Cover the plates with water and try to charge each to see if they will hold 7 volts. Keep an eye on them, monitoring for heat and voltage. You do not need to remove battery from pack to charge.

Six months is a long time to leave a pack. I cannot answer the tow switch question as my carts are series carts. When I leave them I disconnect the pack completely.

Good luck....

[williep]

Thanks AJ
The car charger seems worth a try. Also physically disconnetcting the batteries for storage is a good idea. 1 question? the car charger is made to charge a 12v battery. I believe that they use 14Volts as a charging voltage.
Is that why you do it manually at low amperage? So you can control the charge rate? Do most car battery chargers have a manual low amperage option?

Thanks again, Bill

[red tail]

[QUOTE=ajbrown;368489]First off, I would :pray: (finally got to use that smiley)

They may be salvageable, they may not. You have to get the collective pack up to 36 volts to get the charger to kick on (assuming 6-8 volt batteries). You can charge one at a time with a 12 volt car charger. When I did this I set the charger on a low amperage and manual.

Cover the plates with water and try to charge each to see if they will hold 7 volts. Keep an eye on them, monitoring for heat and voltage. You do not need to remove battery from pack to charge.

Six months is a long time to leave a pack. I cannot answer the tow switch question as my carts are series carts. When I leave them I disconnect the pack completely.
when i bought my house it came with a golf cart. 6 8volt batterys.
it sat for 14 months without a charge and was dead as a door-nail 'whatever a dead door-nail is' ! i did exactly as alan describes and it worked perfect.

[ajbrown]

Thanks AJ
The car charger seems worth a try. Also physically disconnetcting the batteries for storage is a good idea. 1 question? the car charger is made to charge a 12v battery. I believe that they use 14Volts as a charging voltage.
Is that why you do it manually at low amperage? So you can control the charge rate? Do most car battery chargers have a manual low amperage option?

Thanks again, Bill

I lowered the amperage because that is what I read others with much more experience than me do :). See here:

http://www.buggiesgonewild.com/electric-club-car/47568-battery-low-voltage-will-charge-pack.html

[williep]

Thanks again, That's a great website for golf carts. I wil get myself a charger and a hydrometer and give the batteries a try. I'll let you know how I make out. I really liketring to fix someting myself before calling in some help. You learn a lot and get a feeling of accomplishment if you're sucessful.
Bill:

[ajbrown]

. I really liketring to fix someting myself before calling in some help. You learn a lot and get a feeling of accomplishment if you're sucessful.
Bill:

That is exactly how I feel :thumbup:. I knew you liked to tinker as you actually knew the voltages of your batteries :highfive:. I have yet to find something I cannot do on my electric carts. I am no expert, but there are many places to get advice and I enjoy doing the work.

[zcaveman]

I am not positive but I believe that when you put the switch into TOW mode it removes the power from the motor so that it does not try to engage/disengage when you are being towed.

According to my EZGO manual, it says - Put key switch in N (neutral) and the Run/Tow switch to the Tow position prior to towing the vehicle to prevent damage to the electric motor and controller.

Some one from Spano told me that he had looked at a cart where the owner did not put it in tow and it ruined the motor.

[ajbrown]

When I first moved here I came across a gentleman pushing his cart on O'dell Circle in the area of the Mallory Post Office. His wife was steering. I stopped to see if I could help. He was a renter, his electric Club Car cart died. It was a warm day and he was a relatively young and strong looking man, but he was red, sweating and physically stressed.

I hopped out to help him push it off of Odell onto a side street so I could run home just up the street and get a rope. As soon as I leaned on the cart I knew why this poor man looked so bad. I asked him if he had put the cart in tow, he said "in what"? :22yikes:

I may have saved a life that day :ho:!

[PylutDood]

First, you should NEVER use tap water in a battery. Especially FLORIDA water with clorine in it. Use DISTILLED WATER. Available at Walmart in gallons.

If a battery is heavily Sulfated it is probably a gonner. The internal cells may be shorted out. (see below)

If the batt voltage reads very low they will need more than a charge. They will need a "Kick in the Butt" BOOST!..to get them to start taking a charge.

Battery's charge on amperage (current) not voltage. You need to push as many amps into that battery as the batt will take. Initially, a 12V charger set to max amp output on ONE battery at a time MIGHT do it.
40 amps at 12v would be better. At less than 10 amps, your just wasting your time. The batt will take forever to start coming up, if at all.

If (hopefully) your batts do charge, I would recommend checking voltage at each cell (Cells...not battery) to confirm you have no dead or shorted cells within a battery. This is not difficult to do. If anyone is interested I will post this proceedure in a later post. You will need a voltage meter with long probes, that reads DC volts.

Hope this helps.
Dave

[williep]

I bought a charger at walmart gand tried to charge each battery separately. However, The charger automatically detects what voltage the battery is suppose to be and it thinks an 8V battery is a 6V battery and it won't charge them above 5.5v so I returned it. I borrowed a manual Sears charger and set it at 12V and 2 amps. I charged each battery to approxmately 7 Volts. (It should take about 1/2 hour each) and you have to monitor it because when the battery gets over 7 volts the charger can overheat! I found an 8 Volt Charger on Amazon from Battery Tender that will cost around $60 with shipping. It may not be a bad idea since you don't take any chances of smoking something.
After I got all of the batteries over 7 volts, I plugged in the regular cart charger and it started humming. What a great sound! It charged overnight and when I woke up next morning they were all charged above 8 Volts. All of the Specific Gravity reading were pretty low. ( I bought a SG tester at Advanced Auto Parts, for around $4). But all of my batteries were pretty dry and had new distilled water added so maybe they needed a few charges to bring the readings into acceptable range.
I ran the cart about 5 miles and rechecked the batteries and they all held over 8 volts which made me happy.
I recharged the cart last night and all of the voltage readings and SG readings improved.
So maybe I can squeeze some more life out of these batteries. I bought the cart with the house and for all I know, they may be the originals The cart is a 2002 Club Car.
I tried to attached my excel file readings but this program won't accept excel files so if anyone wants the readings, give me your e-mail address and I will send them to you. A Special thanks to AJBROWN

[ajbrown]

You are more than welcome, glad the charger worked out. If you ever want to put 8 batteries in that 02, I know a guy :)....

Here is a chart which is the key numbers for voltages, which you may already have, but just in case:

http://www.trojanbattery.com/BatteryMaintenance/Testing.aspx

At the bottom of that web page is the chart. A strong fully charged 8 volt battery should get to 8.49 volts. My three year old batteries get to:

8.47 8.45 8.42 8.40 8.49 8.46

The other take away from that chart is it is not good to discharge a battery to less than 8.07 or 50%.

Fun stuff isn't it :highfive: