2003 PDS rebuilt and having problems

Wyojason

Greetings!

I am having trouble with my cart and wondered if any of you could help me out.

First, the background. I have a 2003 EZGO PDS. Last year, I decided to redo the whole thing so I tore it apart and completely rebuilt it.

I contacted scottyb and we came up with a plan to replace the electronics with a Alltrax DCX400a controller / 200a solenoid and voltage reducer (running a Wetsounds sound bar, horn, and switchable lights). New T105 batteries were installed—basically the only thing NOT changed was the stock motor. I also lifted the cart 6 inches and added 23 inch tires. I am using the cart to golf. It is about 1.5 miles up a continuous grade to the course.

So everything worked great for a while and then I started having problems. After running for a while the cart would quit running. When I stepped on the accelerator it would act like it wanted to go then just stop. If you repeatedly stepped on the pedal it would go again. After doing this for a bit it would quit. If I let the cart sit for a while it would work again normally.

I pulled the motor and checked that the brushes were fine. I blew out all of the dust but that didn’t help. When I checked the LED on the controller when the problem occurred I got 6 flashes – battery low voltage. So I put the pack on a load tester and it was within specs – 104:31 was the time.

I have my thoughts as to what is causing this but I want to see what you all think.

Thanks,
Jason

BGW

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Clemsoncartguy

Overheating controller/burnt up?

JohnnieB

What is the voltage between the controller's B+ and B- when the cart is misbehaving.
What is the undervoltage slider set for?

Any of the high current cables or high current connections getting hot?
What size (gauge) cables?

Save a data log (Continuous sampling rate) that includes an episode of the cart misbehaving, zip it and attach it to a post here.

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Running a stock PDS motor at 36V and turning 23" tires while climbing a 1.5 mile incline is essentually a component failure waiting for an inopportune time to happen, so I suspect there was more to Scotty's recommendations or he wasn't made aware of the 23" tires and/or the 1.5 mile incline.

scottyb

What Johnnie said ^^^

Wyojason

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't change the default settings on the controller so the undervoltage was whatever the default value would be--I think it was really low (21 maybe??). I am using 4ga cables. As for the rest, I will do some more research and get back to you.

And please don't get me wrong--I wasn't trying to point fingers at anyone (especially scotty). He was great and got me headed in the right direction. I am merely trying to figure out what is going on.

Cheers!

JohnnieB

I'm not sure why the Under Voltage error is occurring, but a very likely cause of the cart quitting and then running again after resting a few minutes is an overheating controller. (4 red flashes)

The 5-minute rating on a DCX400 controller is 210A and with 23" tires and climbing a long upgrade, you might be exceeding the 5-minute rating.

Recording a data log will show how many amps the armature is drawing, what the voltage at the controller is dropping to under load, what the temperature of the buss bar the MOSFETs are mounted on is climbing to and what error flags are being set.

Once we know what is happening, we can suggest remedies.