Club car goes slow

1fatcat

Hi all, I'm in need of some advise on a 1999 Club Car DS that I'm trying to fix for a neighbor. The cart goes full speed on flat tar, but starts loosing power and speed at the slightest of an incline. It seems like the batteries are weak, but 5 of the batteries are 1 year old and 1 battery is 1 week old.

The reason for the mismatch on batteries is that the charge wire was hooked up to the 5th battery in the battery pack, so the 6th battery was never getting charged, but was having power pulled out of it...so the 6th battery was shot.

Now with a new 6th battery and 5 one-year-old batteries, and the charge wire hooked up right, the cart still seems weak on battery power (have charged overnight-no difference).

List of things I've tried/tested/checked:
~cleaned contacts in throttle box & adjusted for full throttle travel
~cleaned contacts in forward-reverse switch
~jumped small yellow wire at solenoid to ground (read this tests computer?)
~ohm tested all heavy gauge cables (battery, motor, controller)
~inspected all heavy gauge cable ends (all tight and clean)
~removed motor, disassembled, cleaned & inspected-no problems found

I drove the cart with my DVOM hooked up to the battery pack and voltage starts out at 51-52v then drops to 47-48v after a short run (half a mile) and cart looses power. Can only really feel the power loss on slight inclines, seems OK on flat tar, but looses power & speed pretty quickly on just the slightest incline.

I'm wondering what happened to the 5 batteries when the charge wire was hooked up wrong? Beings the charger was putting 48+V into 40V worth of batteries, did this wreck those 5 batteries?

If I test the batteries separately, I get these readings:
1 8.64
2 8.63
3 8.65
4 8.63
5 8.60
6 8.54

The newest battery (#6) reads lower than the 5 older batteries? So I'm wondering if the 5 older ones got overcharged when the charge wire was hooked up wrong? But would overcharged batteries make the cart go slower/lack power? I would have thought it would make it a bit faster if anything?

Appreciate any help, thanks!

BGW

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jakesnake27

The batteries seem fine...
My cart drops as low as 43v when going up a hill.
You're readings are good, they all indicate full charge.
Does the cart have the V-glide system (pie shaped box)?

usmc4hire

My 48v CC DS (1999 as well) looses a lot of speed on even the slightest incline but still pulls like a tractor as far as torque is concerned (just goes slow). Personally, and I have nothing to back this up, I think its just a Club Car thing and I'm not concerned as there are few hills in my area.

But you're dropping to 47-48v after a half mile run. My 100% stock cart can go 8 miles and still be at 50v without recharging (again, no hills here) on its 6 month old batts. I'll be interested to see what the other more knowledgeable board members chime in with.

anix

When I had the stock motor on mine, The wife and I rode for about fourteen miles and pedal to metal on flat ground I was reading 47.3-47.5 and about 49V no load with four year old batteries. Hook the meter up and load test the pac and each batt.

Sae255975

I'm fairly new to this as well but here are some of my opinions. I had a similar problem where I had to mash the pedal to get top speed and my speed all around was slower than I thought I should be getting with my setup. I have an alltrax controller which is programmable. Come to find out the controller was set on the wrong field map. A call to alltrax confirmed this and they emailed me the fix in a hex file. With that done, the speeds still did not change. Come to find out, the mcor had gone bad. After the new one was installed I went from mashing the pedal and getting 19mph to 27mph and a wrath of torque. not sure if this is your issue but was thinking possibly your mcor? Just my thoughts.....

Golfdog

Your cart probably has the pie shaped potentiometer between #4 and 5 battery, check that the wiper arm covers the last copper segment when you floor the pedal.

scottyb

1 year of over charging those 5 batteries could do some real damage. Mathematically the charger cut off is 63v divided by 5 batteries is 12.6v each or 3.17v per cell. Well above comfortable range. Make sure they didn't put a 6v battery in place of the ruined 8v, then I would suggest a draw-down test done by a golf cart shop too. This is one sure way to determine if the problem is battery related - or not.

Stevegrmich

. . . I would also test the SG of the cells . . . a friend's cart read "normal" when testing pack voltage, but died on slight inclines . . . he had two batteries with bad/dead cells . . .

1fatcat

Well, I feel pretty stupid!

The owner came and drove the cart and she said it was better than ever! Faster than it ever used to be since she owned it!

I've been chasing a problem that didn't exist!

So the whole time, the only problem was the dead 6th battery. After replacing it, I thought it still seemed slow. I was wrong! She said it never was a real fast/powerful cart and that it had more power now than it ever has.

Thanks for the help guys! I was about to replace the controller!!!!

P.S. I did notice that it only has a 225 amp controller. Seems a little small when new controllers are 300+ amp.