02 PDS dies/no voltage at the charge meter

pvancorenland

My '02 PDS was running fine with different loads (1 person through 2.5 persons) for the whole day, but it suddenly died last night. When I turned the key, the cart didn't run and the charge meter didn't want to turn on. After we towed it home, it would work without any problem. We've also been using it without problems during the day.
Last night, I was using the (aftermarket) lights and did notice that on of them was quite low.

I looked at the wire diagram, but couldn't find how the charge meter is hooked up. Does it get's it's power from the switch at the key?


Peter

BGW

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LostHusker

From reading the post most charge of state meters only work when the cart is moving, not while at idle, correct me if I am wrong here guys.

tonyton

That's what I have gathered also...You need to be under load for an accurate reading (more or less) You can't really depend on the meter to estimate the time left on the pack. We plug carts in whenever they are not in use. This assures a full charge each time a cart goes out. (golf course)
If I run one of our carts for about 4 hours, it did good (excellent). You really don't want to run the batteries below 50% capacity. That means more frequent charging is better than running it dead. The lights will always shorten the drive time on your pack. Get an idea of number of hours on a full charge and use that and the meter as a guide. You may want to run a seperate battery for the accessories.
You may have a connection problem but, we have had carts dead on the course and 2 or 3 hours later it will drive in under its own power.
Did you ground the lights to the batteries? Frame grounding causes problems also.
The diagram is in the accessories. The SOC is an option...

pvancorenland

The batteries are fine. The only reason I mentioned the SOC meter is because that's normally the thing that lights up when I turn the key to the OK position.
When the cart failed, it wouldn't light up the SOC light. After a while, everything would be fine though.
I'm thinking that the controller might have overloaded, but I'm not sure if that affects the SOC light.
I ran it this morning, and it runs just fine.

tonyton

You could have overheated the controller. I don't question the batteries, if you run them all day you don't have a battery issue. If you run the batteries dead, they will sometimes re-charge themselves in a couple of hours. The electrons are still moving and some return to the plates, or blow off the plates?, Anyway a couple hours later they will run for a short distance and appear charged.
I've seen several problems with the SOC meters in recent days. There may be a bad lot out there. I don't know.

pvancorenland

Tonyton,h

Thanks for your reply.
I think that the batteries are fine, and that the SOC meter is fine too.
My suspicion is with the contact at the switch, since when she runs, she runs fine, but when she didn't run last night, the only difference that I saw, was that the SOC meter light didn't come on.
I suspect that the SOC meter is wired to the switch which is closed by turning the key, I couldn't find info on that in the manual.

Can anyone please confirm the wiring of the power to the SOC meter for me?

COURTESYCART

SOC meter are wired from ign switch and the battery pack, it has 3 wires. One postive from positive of pack and one negative from negative side of pack. The third wire goes to the ign switch to light it up. it gets no said power from ign switch. The ign switch just turns it on.