Why wont my charger come on?

eznogo

Marathon Charger

I have a 94 marathon.batteries are half way charged with a 6v regular chager,not a cart charger!I got a charger today that we tested on another cart before taking.it worked fine!came home and it wont come on hooked to my cart!Any suggestions?

TucsonDirect

because of the voltage of the batts the charger doesnt know what to do, charge all batts fully with the 6v charger then, Run it as usal then plug in the charger, also check connections to and from the charging ports

scottyb

Every electric cart owner needs a voltmeter. What is the pack voltage when the charger won't come on? It could be too low or too high?

mikesmotortoys

Auto chargers need to "see" around 24 volts when plugged in to turn themselves on. If you are "halfway" charged, then there isn't enough juice for the charger to work. scottyb is right - you HAVE TO have a voltmeter if you are ever going to learn anything about (or work on) an electric cart...

eznogo

I Cked The Voltage At The Charger Plug On The Cart It Is About 21v's

scottyb

Cool Well you don't have enough volts for the charger to see the batteries. Keep charging them with an auto charger.
See MIke's post.......

eznogo

Can I Charged 2 At A Time On A Slow 12v Charge?

mikesmotortoys

Here's what you can try. If you have 21 volts in your battery bank, go ahead and plug the charger into your cart. Take some jumper cables and put them on the main positive and the main negative. You can then put the other jumper cable ends onto your car, lawn mower, or whatever else you may have that carries 12 volts (a 12 volt battery charger might also work, as long as yopu have a good shop style charger - not a Walmart 5 amp unit). This will give your battery bank an extra 'boost' of power to see if your charger will come on. If it does, then you can remove the jumper cables and the charger should stay on. HOWEVER, if you have a bank that can only hold 21 volts - you should start considering a new set of batteries...

scottyb

Absolutely. Connect to any 2 'in series'. Give em a medium charge for 30 minutes and check the voltage. I would bring each pair to about 13.5v. They will loose some voltage as they settle, this is normal. Ideally, you will get them all to read about the same and have 30 plus volts. Now.....
try the cart charger.

Good luck.

Sorry Mike - did'nt see you there!

mikesmotortoys

LOL - He's got 2 ideas working now! I still think that the batteries are the issue, though...