48v club car charger or batteries?

Unsoshl

Step pops has a '99 club car with 2014 us batteries. The cart has always topped off at 51.3 or so 12 hours after charging. Recently, his cart only charges to 49.6 or so. The cart runs fine, but it seems he's just not getting a full charge. While charging now, his pack only reads 51.6 which i know is way low. Each battery under charge reads 8.5. The batteries have been maintained properly. I am thinking its a charger issue (Powerdrive 2). The charger will charge as normal, then shut off. When plugged right back in it will run for another cycle but never to a full charge. Any help to isolate the problem is greatly appreciated.

BGW

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mrgolf

Wonder if resetting the obc might help. The main negative does go through the obc I hope.

Unsoshl

He just changed the cables to 4 guage. Im a yamaha guy. How can i diagnose this? He may have bypassed it

Unsoshl

The previous owner had the cart rebuilt a few years back. I googled obc's and i dont see anything of the sorton his cart. Main neg goes straight to alltrax axe controller.

mrgolf

That charger needs the obc to control how much it charges the batteries.the obc is in the wall behind the batteries, it has a hole about 3/8 in diameter. The main negative need to go through that hole so the sensor can tell how much to charge batteries. You have to take the lug end off the cable to get it through the hole.

I'm sure others may have photos to show how it goes.

teecro

Yes it goes straight to the controller but it should pass through a small electrical devise which from the battery side might look like nothing more than a fat grommet. Unknowingly many times when people install larger cables when the cable will not fit through the hole they run around it. When this happens the OBC is no longer able to figure you how much energy was used and thus it does not know how much charge to allow. What brand and type of charger? If a PowerDrive then it likely depends on an OBC, some early chargers had a dial timer. Does this one have a dial timer? If not then the charger depends on an OBC... Also old chargers sometimes get to the point that they no longer fully charge the batteries, this is due to the capacitors in the charger getting old and their value drifts, you can easy replace these.

Unsoshl

Wow you guys are great. Sure enough he went around the obc. All is great now and it's charging away. Thank you so much for sharing ur knowledge!!

mrgolf

It all works out sometimes.

warzak

How did you solve the 4 gauge wire going through the OBC?

Unsoshl

Since he circumvented the OBC when running new cables we just cut off the terminal, ran it through OBC and tossed another terminal on. Worked like a champ.

Recently his charger quit shutting off automatically. If anyone has knowledge as to why a Powerdrive 2 would do this and if it can be fixed please let me know!!