WHY??? Motor got hot and lost most power

Just 1 More

93 Marathon, 21" tires 4ga cables, (NO controler or motor upgrade yet) old batteries (Feb 2006 bats)

Went trail riding today to put the old cart to the test.. after about 7 miles.. we were riding some trails that had a lot of roots and it was pretty rough,, bouncing/bumping pretty bad..
The cart lost most of it's power and the motor got hot,, too hot to touch. Made it back to the truck and let it sit for 5 minutes and it had a little more power,, enough to drive it up on the trailer.

I went to Interstate battery Friday to buy a new set of batteries and the guy tested mine (Hydrometer, Volt & Load test) and said they were all good, just needed a good charge.. So, I put one at a time on a 6V charger for 12 hours each. Put them in the cart this morning and hooked the cart charger up and it only charged for maybe 20 min before it shut off.. while it was charging, it smelled like rotten eggs. I'm thinikng the batteries might test good,, but are to old to hold a good charge.

BUT, Why would the motor get hot like that?

BGW

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rabbitreborn

Because when the voltage drops the Amperage increases . Along with the increase in Amperage you also get a corresponding increase in resistance and higher resistance means higher heat. Likely as not you were cooking the internal windings of the motor because the stock motor/controller of that cart were never designed for the load the larger tires are putting it under. The increase in power after 5 minutes of rest was due to 2 things.... #1, the batteries had a chance to rebuild some of their "surface charge" and #2, the windings of the motor had a chance to cool somewhat allowing the power to flow freely once again.

Just 1 More

So are you thinking the batteries are bad??? I know I should replace the controller but I don't have the extra $500 right now... WEll, I kind of do.. I can do one or the other,, Batteries or controller
I just put the volt meter on the batteries and one only registers 3V the others are 5V .. They were all 6V before we started this mornirng

rabbitreborn

Start with the batteries, the damage is already done to the motor and controller and you can always replace them later when they fail completely, but they are gonna fail faster if there isn't enough power to operate correctly.

arcitech

You will definitely need batteries at those voltages, no way around it.

Just 1 More

$574.00 later ... New batteries are in Got it on the charger now and we'll see how it does a little later today.
The boss man came out and looked at them this time and said yes, definitly bad.. cases are bulged and hard,, said the rotten egg smell is from the batteris being "sulfated"???
Interstate G2-XHD $87.95 w/1 year free replacement

arcitech

Ouch! $$$ but not a bad price.
Let us know how it goes!!

rabbitreborn

Black battery with a green top? If so, that is an EXCELLENT price for those!

Just 1 More

Yes.. Black battery, green top.. I did like the speed caps the other ones had.. these came with wing nuts but I kept and used the regular nuts off the old ones. I feel they get a better/tighter connection

rabbitreborn

Yeah, a couple things to note about these batteries....

The Wing nuts (as you said already) are crap, but they are Stainless so save them for some other project you may have lmao

There is currently no speed cap that will fit these batteries because Interstate spaced the fill holes too far apart.

Put lock washers under your battery nuts. With the post now sunk into the top, if you get a melted terminal (from a loose connection) you will burn a hole in the top of the battery in a heartbeat.

Great battery overall... 6 extra pounds of lead, and I ran a discharge test on them and found then to be capable of greater discharge times than the Trojan T-125's