Understanding charger amp readings

[Silverstreak]

Hi campingshadow,
Are you seeing alot of fluid on the batteries after you ride it, or after it charges? Are you seeing any bulging or splits in any of your batteries?
Make sure that your terminals are clean and that the part of the cables going to them are clean and intact and all your nuts are tightened.

[madoc1]

welcome to BGW cs. check out the stickies at that top of this forum for diagrams, and the bennett link for manuals. good luck. what part of texas are you in?

[pggroves]

Is there a sulfur (rotten egg) smell during charging? You may be boiling the electrolyte out when charging. You really need to monitor the batteries while charging as I previously posted. Any chance you can identify and date the batteries? It is sounding like your batteries may need to be replaced.

Search for Anderson SB connectors. Guessing yours might be an Anderson SB50 connector. EZGO used a few different charging connectors over the years. The little spade clips inside the connectors are called radsocks. All of these parts can be replaced and are fairly inexpensive. Any of the sponsors here can get you fixed up once you identify the type of connectors you have on the cart.

Pictures help immensely too!

Good luck.

[campingshadow]

I sure appreciate the feedback. I will print it out and pass it on to the maintenance guy. We have noticed nothing wrong with the batteries physically. They appear to be in good shape and there has been no smells coming from them during charging. All of the terminals are clean.

He did work a bit on the charging cable yesterday and said he got the spades more properly aligned with each other and now the plug fits better in the receptacle. Today (I hope) he is going to refurbish the battery. We are a tad confused about the line in our instructions that says to empty half the water in the battery and add the Epsom Salts solution. How much is half? How much water does the darn 3 cell 6 volt battery hold?

Now I have to tell ya....I went on Ebay to see about the cost of the batteries and found several guys selling the "instructions" on how to refurbish a battery. For anything from $. 99 plus shipping to $7.98 including shipping they would send them out. So I went to Ehow and downloaded the instructions for free. What a racket? I may be old, but I am not that dumb!!!

I am living in East Texas just across from the border on I-20.....in the wildfire area!!!! If anyone has any extra rain.....send it our way, please.

[campingshadow]

Ah, the continuing saga......we have now determined that all batteries seem to be charging correctly....all are reading 6 volts and the main port is reading 37 volts. Yet the cart can barely make it around the park one time and it completely dies and will not move another inch. Now, we are wondering if it is a bad motor or some other component and not the batteries. We were also wondering if there might be a problem with the charger since we were charging every day and the water was boiling out so fast. Long story short....we are so confused now and just do not know what to look at now. A golf cart mechanic I am not!!!! :(

[AzPete]

Fully charged the pack should read 38.6 volts + after the charger has been off for a few min. Should charge to 44-45 volts then drop to 38.6 or so. The 37 volt reading is a pretty dead battery pack. Mine reads37.5 after a long hard day of use.

Each battery should read around 6.4 volts when charged.

[kernal]

Originally Posted by pggroves

Put a volt meter on the main positive and main negative of the battery pack. These are the ones that are connected to the back side of the charger port.
Monitor the voltage during a charge cycle and especially towards the end of the cycle when amps should be less than 5. You're looking for a voltage reading of around 44-46 volts at that point.

After charging completes wait over night and then check the voltage of the pack and each individual battery and look for any significant variances in individual battery voltages and you should have close to 38v +/- on the pack.

Good luck...

Did you do this?

In my opinion your batteries are shot.