hd electric has low power in forward and fast in reverse

chevyguy82

i've got a 1976 harley 36 volt golf cart. i just received my brand new lester charger today. the old charger transformer was extremely loud and finally died. i can't even hear the new charger run, it is awesome. george at lester sold me the charger for 220 bucks shipped and i had it in one day. i did notice tonight after about an hour of charger scale went from 22 amps down to 15 and then a small puff of smoke came out of charger. it did not blow breaker or fuse and the charger actually functions normally. what would cause that? i took the cart off the charger and it seems to have more speed now. twice as much speed in reverse as forward. it will spin tires in reverse but not in forward and lots more top speed. what would cause this? do i have a wiring issue somewhere? i found one battery connection that was a little loose. would that cause the problem?i don't want to burn up my new charger already. thanks for any help i can get.

BGW

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69makinitmine

The puff of smoke is NOT a good sign for a new charger! Don't tear into it or you'll void the warranty! Call George back up and talk to him about maybe sending back to get checked out. It could be anything down to some resistor, all the parts have vital functions or they wouldn't be in there... As for the speed issues, the loose connection wouldn't be the cause as it would have affected both fwd and rev because they use the same current path, just reversed at controller to change motor rotation direction. My 60's sumptin Cushman does the exact same thing and haven't dug in to find why yet. Think it might be the way the motor is internaly wired or timed. Another possibility is when in reverse full power is applied when pedal is "just" pressed and fwd is reduced through resistors/controller. I would like to know the exact reason too as it would save me a bunch of troubleshooting time! Does anyone out there know why for sure?

mauistardog

It could be that it just seems faster in reverse. Reverse gearing in lower in most carts. So the cart takes off really quickly in reverse do to the low gearing. On really steep hills, I go up backwards as it puts less stress on the motor.
aloha
joe