Need help with precedent light wiring

smokey tennis shoe

Have a 2009 precedent with 6 eight volt Trojan batteries.

I just bought a light kit and also a bucket harness from stretch plastics.

I got the light bar and tail lites mounted, no problem. Also got the bucket harness strung thru the cart.

So all lites just plug into the connectors on the harness. The short wire harness just plugs in under dash area.

Now the blue feed wire and the black negative wire that lands in the battery area. My cart does not have a reducer. The stretch instructions say to hook up to 16 volts.

This cart has no other accessories other than this lite kit. So do I just hook the two wires up to 16 volts, or do I have to install a reducer?

BGW

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mrgolf

If it were me, JMO, I would get a 48 to 12 volt reducer. They are not that hard to install. Your batteries will like that a lot better also. You may want a fan, or radio, or 12 volt power outlet. You will be ready for them.

smokey tennis shoe

yes I know I can install a 48/12 reducer. I even have one, but I would have to wire in a cut off switch, or the reducer would be powered up all the time? I am installing the lites on a cart I plan to sell.

Maybe if the key switch is 48 volt, can I run the reducer feed thru the key switch?

mrgolf

Don't know if key switch would be good or not. That would be quite a load on the switch. You can power a 48 volt relay off the switch, let the contacts of the relay power the power supply. You really don't want to rig it to work for a little while, it will come back to you later in some form.

Best to leave it as is and let the new owner get the lights hooked up, they may want a 30 amp power supply. This is just the way I think, you do it how ever you are happy with.

nobogez42

I have my reducer power running through the key switch and it works fine. I believe you are only running enough amps through it to power the reducer. It will not be carrying the entire load through it. Also, these reducer do not pull a lot of amps to power, so many folks wire them to the batteries and let them stay powered up all of the time.

Sergio

If your reducer has a trigger wire, usually yellow color, then it should be fine connected to the key switch.
Do not however run the main +48v for the converter off the key switch, there were some strange "main drop out" errors reported here that were traced back to sudden load changes in the key switch circuit.
A relay would work fine if the converter does not have a trigger wire.

smokey tennis shoe

Would there be any repercussions, going without a reducer, and just running the lites on 16 volt?

Sergio

My cart lights were wired to 16v when I got it, I don't think it had been that way for long before I bought it.
The 2 batteries that were providing the 16v were out of balance with the pack and I could never bring them back. I eventually replaced all of the batteries mainly because of those 2.
So yes, the outcome will certainly be premature replacement of the batteries by the new owner.

smokey tennis shoe

Thanks for that info, I will install the reducer. Now I just need to decide to hook it up so it runs all the time or put a switch in line with it.

The new owner would then have to turn the witch on to energize the reducer, to energize the lites. That doesn't sound like a great situation.

Also, the new owners are snow birds here in the desert, and very rarely will drive the cart with the lites on. So what should I do?

mrgolf

You could wire the reducer to power on with the light switch. And hook the lights to come on when the switch is turned on. The lights would hook to the reducer direct without a switch, I would put a fuse in line to the lights. I think that would work. You could try it with clips to test it.