Badboy charger not amping up

golfdock

I have a badboy instinct that charged well until lately. When I put it on charge it used to ramp up after a few seconds and now it just barely comes off zero. I was working on it today after driving it till the gauge on my cart read below half and plugged the charger in and the same thing, barely moved the needle. I unplugged it after a minute and the gauge on my cart read fully charged. I know there is an issue but don't know what that issue is. I hope some of you can help me figure this out. Thanks

BGW

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Revolution

BBBs are bad in not good ways sometimes! I should know I have one.

What year is it?

We need more info on the charger. Possibly a picture.

I can't guess what voltage it is but if you could tell us it would help a lot.

golfdock

Sorry. It is a 72v 2014 with a dpi charger. I have had ezgo's for a long time and after they bought bbb I took a chance a few months ago.

Revolution

Ok. Now we are getting somewhere.

Do you have a multimeter? If you do measure the battery pack voltage with the charger disconnected.

golfdock

I will in the morning. Thanks

JohnnieB

If the yellow "Charging" LED blinking on and off slowly (about once every 2 seconds), the charger is in the pre-qualification mode.

If so, the 72C012 DPI charger will limit the output current to <5A until the 72V pack voltage is above about 63V (10.5V per 12V battery) before it goes into the bulk charge phase and puts out ~12A

Could be the pack was severely discharged, or a bad battery (or more), or the charger is sick.

What is the pack voltage and the individual battery voltages?

Attached is a manual for it.

Attached Files

General_Chargers.pdf (464.8 KB, 0 views)

golfdock

The pack has 78.5 volts and each battery is around 13. I'm not sure what the issue is now. I did find one cell that was low on the hydrometer.

JohnnieB

The at-rest 100% SoC voltage for Trojan batteries and their clones is 76.4V for a 72V pack, so how long has they been resting?

The nominal float charge voltage with a 72V DPI in Mode-2 is 78.8V, so if the charger was working normally and taken off the batteries shortly before measuring, that night be about right.

If so, you might just have a defective ammeter on the charger.
Do the LEDs go through the correct sequence while the charger is connected to the batteries? (IE: Does it end up with just the AC power led and a solid green LED)

golfdock

I left it on the charger all night. Should I run the cart and check the the voltage before I charge them back up? It could be my controller is not performing correctly. There is a parking break fault blinking on it which I have replaced the switch but the fault still blinks.

JohnnieB

Sorta sounds like the charger is working (except for the ammeter) and the pack was on float charge until you unplugged the charger, shortly before you measured the voltage.

You don't have to, but it wouldn't hurt to run the cart around for a few minutes to see if it seems to be performing normally before plugging the charge back in. (The charger will just stay in the regular charge cycle longer)

Connect you voltmeter to the pack and monitor the pack voltage. It will start at whatever the voltage had settled to and climb to about 84.6V (Pre-qualify and Bulk phases), then stay at about 84.6V for a while and then start to climb again until the regular charge cycle terminates, and then the voltage will decrease (slowly) down to about 78.8V (float charge) and stay there until the charger is unplugged.

If it does that, the ammeter is probable all that is wrong with the charger, but give DPI a call, they might have some other tests you can do.

I'm not all that familiar with BBB and don't know how the parking brake fault light works, or if it is in anyway associated with the controller. However, I believe it is unlikely that the controller or parking brake fault light has anything to do with the ammeter on a DPI charger not showing registering the amp flow in the battery charging circuit.