NJblue
02-07-2012, 02:44 PM
I have a two year old street-legal Star car with eight 6-volt batteries. While we have never been able to get the 65 mile range that the dealer promised (especially when in street-legal mode), it has at least been adequate for our use (when we had to go to Lopez, we would put the speed switch to "low" which helped to conserve battery). Recently, however, our range has become dramatically reduced - we can barely go from 466A to 466 and back. I had the dealer pick it up for its annual maintenance and to check the batteries out. He called back a day later and said that 3 of the batteries were bad and that we needed to change out all 8.
I wanted a second opinion on the batteries as well as a competitive price for replacement and had a well-known company who specializes in batteries come out to check the system out. They put a meter on the batteries and concluded that they were all good and that the reason for the low range was a lot of corrosion on the battery tops as well as some loose connections for the cables. They hosed the batteries down to clean them, sprayed some anti-corrosion stuff on the posts and tightened all of the connections and said I should be good to go. Given that they could have walked away with selling me 8 new batteries versus the $35 service call, I thanked them for their honesty and went in happy that I didn't have to shell out close to $800 for new batteries.
However, yesterday afternoon I took the fully-charged cart out golfing on an executive course a few miles away, went to a nearby CC for dinner and then came home. I would estimate the total trip to be under 10 miles. By the time I got home, my gauge said that I was close to 50% drained. Compared to what I was experiencing just prior to having the batteries cleaned and tightened, I probably got a bit better range, but certainly nowhere near what I expect.
The questions I have are:
Is the science of battery testing so inexact that the battery "experts" would test them and find them OK when they really are not?
Should I trust the dealer who claimed that he did an annual service - but this service did not include such a fundamental thing as cleaning off the corrosion and tightening the connections?
Do all 8 batteries need to be replaced or just the defective ones - assuming that the dealer is correct on that score?
Is there an underlying problem in the cart (or charger) itself that could cause relatively new batteries to fail (I have added water on a twice-monthly basis)? Who do I trust to find this: the dealer who doesn't do an adequate job in periodic maintenance and who can't explain why I am not getting anywhere near the 65 miles that he claimed - even when the batteries were only a few months old; or the battery "experts" who apparently mis-diagnosed problem batteries?
I wanted a second opinion on the batteries as well as a competitive price for replacement and had a well-known company who specializes in batteries come out to check the system out. They put a meter on the batteries and concluded that they were all good and that the reason for the low range was a lot of corrosion on the battery tops as well as some loose connections for the cables. They hosed the batteries down to clean them, sprayed some anti-corrosion stuff on the posts and tightened all of the connections and said I should be good to go. Given that they could have walked away with selling me 8 new batteries versus the $35 service call, I thanked them for their honesty and went in happy that I didn't have to shell out close to $800 for new batteries.
However, yesterday afternoon I took the fully-charged cart out golfing on an executive course a few miles away, went to a nearby CC for dinner and then came home. I would estimate the total trip to be under 10 miles. By the time I got home, my gauge said that I was close to 50% drained. Compared to what I was experiencing just prior to having the batteries cleaned and tightened, I probably got a bit better range, but certainly nowhere near what I expect.
The questions I have are:
Is the science of battery testing so inexact that the battery "experts" would test them and find them OK when they really are not?
Should I trust the dealer who claimed that he did an annual service - but this service did not include such a fundamental thing as cleaning off the corrosion and tightening the connections?
Do all 8 batteries need to be replaced or just the defective ones - assuming that the dealer is correct on that score?
Is there an underlying problem in the cart (or charger) itself that could cause relatively new batteries to fail (I have added water on a twice-monthly basis)? Who do I trust to find this: the dealer who doesn't do an adequate job in periodic maintenance and who can't explain why I am not getting anywhere near the 65 miles that he claimed - even when the batteries were only a few months old; or the battery "experts" who apparently mis-diagnosed problem batteries?