New Owner - Issues with Charger or Batteries

GolfCartGuy99

Hello Everyone,
New golf cart owner here and I am having some issues...apologies for the long winded post but thought I would give all I know at present.
Purchased a 1998 Club Car DS, 48V.

Brought cart to campground and drove it for 1/2 hour...the light that indicates low battery came on once but went out and did not return as we headed back.

I hooked the charger up to our 2800W Pure Sine Wave Generator and plugged the cart in....the charger started up and the charge cycle began. Took a full 11 hours to charge them (charger went through 3 stages of charging)

We have been taking the cart out for 20-30 minute trips since then and then I am putting it back on charge again. My son has a bit of a lead foot so it is going hard for that time. The batteries would charge within an hour or so and everything seemed ok for the 1st weekend.

Over the last 2 weekends it has been a different story and I'm wondering what I should troubleshoot 1st...Bear in mind we have no access to power so the cart is being left uncharged 5 days a week.

Now it seems the cart will not charge / hold a charge past 48V and the charger is no longer working like it had initially....it no longer goes through 3 stages...it usually powers up to max amps which I assume is to 'sample' the pack before the OBC decides how much juice to give them, then it powers off for a few seconds and then usually goes back to max for 10-20 mins and just shuts off.

The low battery indicator is now almost always on even when immediately pulled from the charger...I have just added a 48V meter to the mix to see where they are at. Even when charging at max the batteries do not show a charge past 48.9V then the charger kicks out and he voltage continues to drop...within 5-10 mins its down to 47V.

Thoughts here?
Batteries are 3 years old but I have no idea how well they were cared for.
Could it be the OBC that is starting to fail?
Charger?
Battery bank?

Would it help at all to try to reset the OBC or would that prove useless as the charger will in fact start to charge?

Do I attempt to bypass the OBC to see if I can 'force' a charge into them?

Could our generator cause the issue somehow? would it be better to plug the generator into the trailer and then the charger into a trailer plug? Would it have any bearing?

Thanks very much for any help guys!

BGW

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mrgolf

5 days without charging will kill batteries quick.

GolfCartGuy99

I realize there is going to be some drop over that time however it should not lose that much of a charge over a 5 day period? Certainly not enough to kill them in a few weeks? I can see this shortening the life span a year or 2 at best?
Please correct me if I am wrong....I am a rookie with these and 48V systems and only know enough to hurt myself lol.
We charge it as soon as we arrive on Friday and leave it fully charged when we leave Sunday afternoon...

mrgolf

If it is not driven for those five days and charged every day it is driven while you are there you should not loose that much. I would charge before use when you get there.

jjance

I used to leave my Precedent unplugged and not charging for 3 or 4 months at a time when we had our snowbird shack in Florida. I would get back jump in and it would be ready to go. Just made sure I had a full charge before I left.

klanel

And I've been worried about mine for a few weeks not getting charged everyday when my charger board was in repair.

joesam

Doesn't sound good for sure! Hard to say if the charger has been compromised because of your generator - but that would be my first guess. Alternatively, a bad battery can sometimes cause early-shut-off too. Somebody smarter than me might know which is more likely.

In the interim - its not a bad idea to "force" charge your pack with a temporary relay bypass; as long as you are there to monitor and turn it off when it hits 60 volts or so.

Volt_Ampere

Self discharge is somewhere around 1% per day.

jjance

Here is what Trojan says about self discharge.

5 – 15% per month depending on
storage temperature conditions.

So with the warm conditions in Florida I could have went 10 months and only be at 50% SOC.