Need Help! Battery Charging question.

[Sticks&strings]

I have all 6 batteries from a 36V cart out of the cart. My wires are unusable. Not sure if batteries are good or not. I don't have a battery charger here at the house. But I do have the cart charger. Is there a way to charge one battery at a time with the cart charger ie, can I remove the charging port from the body and hook the wires coming from it to one battery at a time?

Next question, if that can be done, then what do I need to test the batteries to see if they are good, and where would I buy it?

[bigstik40]

You CANNOT charge any less than 6 batteries connected in series with your cart charger (you will let the smoke out of everything if you try). If you have an older automotive charger with 6 volt setting you can use that on one battery at a time, or use the 12 volt setting to charge two 6 volt batteries connected in series. Check out the stickies at the beginning of the threads and read as much as you can about battery charging, testing, care, etc. Get yourself a digital voltmeter (Harbor Freight)and temperature compensated hydrometer (auto supply store). You will need these to check/monitor your batteries. Good luck - RAY

[Sticks&strings]

Thx bigstik. I will check into those things.

[yurtle]

Originally Posted by Sticks&strings

I have all 6 batteries from a 36V cart out of the cart. My wires are unusable. Not sure if batteries are good or not. I don't have a battery charger here at the house. But I do have the cart charger. Is there a way to charge one battery at a time with the cart charger ie, can I remove the charging port from the body and hook the wires coming from it to one battery at a time?

Next question, if that can be done, then what do I need to test the batteries to see if they are good, and where would I buy it?

You've said your wires are unusable. Are they completely shot, or just the lugs - the things on the ends that allow you to connect them to the batteries? If all of your wires are bad, you can cannibalize the longer wires which go to the motor and use a combination of the good lugs and the mechanical lugs I told you about in a previous post. This will allow you to charge the pack, assuming they have enough voltage to start the cart charger. If they don't, you'll need to borrow or purchase an automobile charger. Or you can purchase enough wire and lugs to only allow charging. Purchase the same size wire as the wires that go from your buggie's charging receptacle to the batteries. This will be too small to run your cart, but you've already removed them, and said your current wires are shot.

Since you've indicated you may go from 36 volt to 48 volt if your batteries are shot, you'll have to decide where to put the extra two batteries before you can buy new wires.

[Sticks&strings]

I may be able to salvage some of the wires, I'll have to see. If I can, I may be able to test these suckers out. I'd like to get this thing going, then I could worry about upgrading it later when funds are more available.