Smaller electrical lines on new solenoid..no power.

[SamanthaP0930]

Went through every wire from the controller, unwrapped one that I thought was were they got rid of the tow switch and those wires were very very nicely melted together, I'm thinking from factory. The wire w the fuse (was red and yellow) that goes to the solenoid, I switched to the solid red like the diagram says. I took that yellow and red and made it into the other wire for the tow switch (along with the new red one).

Unfortunately I still have nothing, but my slight bit of hope is that I have the tow switch wires incorrect? I have one on each. Hopefully I am incorrect? Otherwise I'm still powerless. The switch is up and down connector, the top I have the line w the fuse, the bottom is the red and yellow (red w yellow electrical tape)

Question: the wiring harness that goes to headlight and break lights, does that just get hooked up to a positive and negative? I pushed it the rest of the way down and on the ground under the cart to make the other process easier. No biggie they weren't really working anyways, but I wasn't sure if they plug into this main wiring or are they seperate.

Also I did not have a 3amp fuse so I used a 10, the smallest I have at the moment. Does this have any bearing?

[Cartmaster]

Sorry,
been away for a couple of days. We need to get to the bottom of this issue. I dont think you gave an to answer my question about how you are checking for power! Are you using the voltmeter to follow the path for power. You really need to follow the supply from the battery to find out which parts of the circuit are actually getting a positive supply.
The negative supply from the battery pack appears to feed just the controller and the motor and the controller is what supplies the negative to the solenoid. You may well have a positive supply to the solenoid, but if the controller is not giving it a negative signal it will not activate.

I recall you said you had no tow switch, but i think you have now fixed that! The switch in the dash would be your main switch ( ignition )

You need to check if you have power in the original red wire with the fuse first and if it is reaching your tow switch. If so the tow switch should then feed the red/yellow wires for the other circuits and the main switch. Then you need to see if the main switch is now feeding the red/white wire for the controller and pedal switch and if the pedal switch is sending the power to the controller.

Please remember I am only going by the diagram and what you have said so far. I do not know these carts.

Raise the rear wheels off the ground for safety.

Place your black meter probe on the pack negative terminal.

with your red meter probe,

check for power at the tow switch red wire. If good,

check for power on the red yellow coming from the switch with the switch on. If Good,

check for power at the main switch in the dash on the red/yellow. If good,

check for power on the main switch red/white with the switch on. If good,

Check for power on the red/yellow at the small terminal of the solenoid. If good,

Check for power on the accelerator switch red/white wire. ( pedal )

If good, check for power on the accelerator switch brown wire with pedal pushed. If good,

Check for power at the reverse buzzer if fitted ( shown as a pink wire on the diagram )

Does the reverse buzzer sound when directional switch is put in reverse? This is activated by the controller, so we need power at the controller for this to work.

Hopefully these tests will prove good. If so we can move on.

If we lose power at any of these tests, we need to find out why.

If we are indeed getting power to all these parts, we then need to investigate the negative side of the circuit. This can very quickly determine where the problem is and like VA, I suspect the controller may not be supplying the negative for the solenoid and is the reason for the previous owner overriding the solenoid in the first place. This may not be a bad controller but just a bad connection somewhere.

It may even be just the pedal switch is faulty and not telling the controller to activate the solenoid. I dont know if this controller will even run the cart without the pedal switch working, but you might get lucky.

As I said previously, If the cart is working with the override, most of the components are doing their job, we just need to find out why the solenoid is not activating!

With regard to the light wiring, Hopefully we can ignore it for now. My thoughts would be to remove it all and re install once we have the cart working. The lights would not be directly connected to the battery pack, they should be fed via a fuse to protect the circuit and a switch for turning them on and off. This may have been the extra fuse and has confused the issue.

If you can clarify where the lights are being fed from and how they are switched on and off, it may make things easier to understand.

[SamanthaP0930]

I had ordered a voltmeter.
Positive battery to negative at the end of the circuit = 49.1Volts
For the solenoid :
set to 2k ohms it says .018
Volts set at 200, from battery positive to negative solenoid (controller side) says 48.9 Volts
Positive battery to lower solenoid terminals said 1.8 Volts
Negative Battery to positive solenoid and both lower terminals on solenoid it said 47.2 Volts. (I did not put it on the negative controlled side, honestly was just afraid to put negative to negative)

Checked the tow switch, battery negative to red/yellow 47.2V
Battery negative to first connector at break pedal. Red/white wire said 47.2
Followed to connector at the gas pedal, these are Blue, black and orange. This was the odd one..came back 4.9 from the blue wire. (Attached pic)
From there: went to the ignition switch, 47.2 Volts from the red/yellow.
Directional switch: 47.2.

Yes I completely removed the light harness, made this so much easier. It was more so, a connector that I was curious what it went to. Arm coming off the main harness. Black and white, solid black, red and white. I believe it's the "transceiver" optional on the wiring diagram. (Upper right corner) just didn't know what meant.

Also there is no buzzer, the pink and brown wires in the front go to a connector that isn't hooked up. Device (buzzer- was never on the cart. )

I also still have to get a 3amp fuse. Everywhere I have gone only has 5. So I did put that in instead of the 10 I had in it.

Hopefully I checked the solenoid correctly. Double hopeful this helped in figuring this out.

I'm not sure if it matters, there was originally a small mounting bracket on the cart to attach the solenoid to the frame with. I had to drill a new hole in the frame to attach the solenoid. I did not also drill a new hole in the bracket. It's attached to the frame without the small bracket piece.

[Cartmaster]

[EDIT] I just re read this part and now wonder if I am reading this wrong LOL. If so, i may need to re do what I had written early this morning LOL.

For the solenoid :
set to 2k ohms it says .018. Is this across the small terminals with no wires attached?
Volts set at 200, from battery positive to negative solenoid (controller side) says 48.9 Volts
Positive battery to lower solenoid terminals said 1.8 Volts I think you may just be reading voltage drop through the cable.
Negative Battery to positive solenoid and both lower terminals on solenoid it said 47.2 Volts. This seems normal, you should see volts on both small terminals until one side sees a negative feed. you are seeing voltage through the energizing coil. (I did not put it on the negative controlled side, honestly was just afraid to put negative to negative)Negative to negative would just give no reading if that is what the meter see's.

I have to go to work, so may not reply for a while now. Please bear with me.
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It looks like your solenoid is not getting a negative controller feed to activate it. This certainly seems to be the main problem here.

I dont think the buzzer is needed to run the cart so we can ignore that for now.

The four wire connector is indeed for the transceiver option and also irrelevant.

The blue black and orange wires at the pedal you tested are for the throttle position sensor, those readings are irrelevant at the moment as we know that works with the solenoid overridden.

The switch that is operated by the pedal with a red/white and brown wire is what tells the controller to activate the solenoid.

You need to see if there is power coming out of the switch on the brown wire when the pedal is pushed to activate the switch.
You must keep it connected to the harness so that your voltage goes into the switch on red white, which you have proved already but need to see it coming back out of the switch on the brown wire.

If you know how to use the continuity buzzer on your meter you can just disconnect the pedal switch and put you meter leads across the wires that go to the switch and push the pedal. The buzzer should sound if the switch is good.
If you do not get any of this, then you may have a faulty pedal switch and may be why the controller is not telling the solenoid to activate. You can bridge the red/white wire and brown wire in the loom plug to see if the solenoid will now activate when you turn the tow and main switches on. This will prove a faulty switch and probably just needs a new one. I dont know if it is a separate switch or part of the throttle position sensor on your cart.

If you do see this voltage on the brown wire, you should check the brown wire on the controller plug to see if you get it there when you push the pedal. If not, there is a fault in the brown wire somewhere between the pedal switch and the controller.

To do these checks, you may have to back probe the plugs with a pin to reach the metal connector inside the plugs or push the pin through the wire ( commonly used methods to check voltages while connected ) and touch the pin with your probe. All these tests still need your black probe on battery negative.

If you find the voltage at the controller brown wire, I suspect the controller to be faulty and not supplying the negative signal. You can check this by putting your red probe on pack positive and black probe on the negative wire at the solenoid connection to see if the controller sends a negative signal when the pedal is pushed. If it does, I would suspect a possible faulty solenoid.

If it does not, now you know you have positive power to the solenoid and other sensors, you can try removing the black/white negative wire from the solenoid and with a spare wire, connect the solenoid terminal directly to battery pack negative. This should allow the solenoid to activate by turning on both the tow and main switches and the cart should drive. This would have the same effect as the override switch that was installed when you got the cart. It is not a solution, just a test to prove the cart will work with a negative feed to the solenoid, and if it works, we just need to confirm where the negative feed is faulty.

From what you have said so far, I feel it is either a faulty pedal switch, a bad connection on the brown wire from the pedal switch to the controller or the controller itself.

I hope all I have said so far makes sense to you and you can finally finish the diagnosis.

We should be able to make the cart work like this but as Volt_ampere said, it is not ideal if the controller fails with a wide open throttle., but at least this way you can switch off power to the solenoid to stop the cart running away.

Its a shame my time zone is so different to yours, as we could have this wrapped up a lot sooner LOL.

I am hoping Volt_Ampere or another sparky will jump in here to confirm I have this right. Like I said, I am gas cart guy, not a sparky.

[SamanthaP0930]

So I messed with it a little last night, I still need to try with a pin, I followed a few videos as well but I suspect I have to input the pin because I was not getting any readings.

On another note, I apologize I don't think I mentioned the charging port when I tested everything. I have written down #2 grey wire goes to receptacle, the diagram shows it switching to red/yellow at the "charger data receiver". However, this one does not. It's solid grey from the receptacle to the controller. Also the black and red coming from the receptacle, black is running straight over to the main battery negative and the red goes to the main battery positive.

As far as the solenoid, battery negative and positive meter to the 3 pins on the solenoid all give 49volts, this does not change with the gas pressed (not sure if it's suppose to) the pin from the controller to the solenoid has zero reading (negative battery positive to pin) I also checked main battery positive and negative to solenoid pin and have nothing as well (no clue if that even made sense to check that but I figured at this point the more information to relay the better). None of these numbers from the solenoid changed when the gas was pressed or not pressed, 49 volts on the three pins and zero on the controller pin.

[Cartmaster]

Have you tried removing the black/white negative wire from the solenoid and connecting that solenoid terminal to the battery pack negative and testing the cart. This will prove everything works apart from the controller activating the solenoid by bypassing that part of the circuit.

[SamanthaP0930]

There is no black and white. If you're standing at the rear on the cart, left side large wire, red, going from the controller to the solenoid (the negative, correct)
Right side large wire goes directly to the positive main battery.
Left side small pin, red and white wire into connector and changes to red and yellow outside connector
Right side small pin, solid black, changes to red and black after the connector.
49 volts coming from lower left, lower right and upper right. Nothing reading controller to solenoid.
Is this the one you're saying to try? Remove from controller and direct connect to negative battery
Left side large pin

[Cartmaster]

I am sorry, I was using my phone and misread the wire colours. it should be the RED/black that comes from the controller that changes to solid black, not BLACK/white. This is the wire i meant for you to remove from the solenoid and then connect that solenoid connector to ground.

In this configuration, the solenoid should now have negative from the battery on one post, and positive on the other from the tow switch on red/yellow that changes to red/white, so as soon as you turn on the tow switch, the solenoid should activate and the cart should work as it was with the black breaker box in place of the solenoid. If it does, then we have proved that the solenoid was not getting the negative signal from the controller. We would now need to find out if the controller is not sending out the negative or the connection between the controller and solenoid is broken somewhere on the red/black wire.

[SamanthaP0930]

It works!! As soon as I flipped the tow switch on it clicked. Turned on the ignition switch and hit the gas and it moves! So does this 100% the controller isn't working or is it possible to be something else, i.e. receptacle? The receptacle is hooked up incorrectly? Red to positive battery, black to negative battery and grey to the controller..

On another note I know nothing about controllers. I did briefly look up the price when it was first mentioned that it could be the issue. I think I can order the same one for 250 or it appears many are going with that green one. That appears to run 600-1000$. The difference in function I have no clue. Do people repair these?

Thank you!
Samantha

[Cartmaster]

Ok. So we know the cart works by overriding the negative feed to the solenoid. Before you spend out on the controller, it is worth running through all the tests for input signals and outputs as described earlier. You need to know that the controller is being told what to do by the pedal switch and that the controller is acting on this signal. I am hoping it is the pedal switch that is faulty and not the controller. There should be five wires at the pedal. Three are speed control and two will be the switch. If you can identify the two switch wires which i think are red/yellow and brown, disconnect them from the switch and bridge them on the harness side, not the switch side. Then see if you get the negative signal on the red/black wire for the solenoid. If you do, the switch is faulty. If you don't, the controller or a connection is probably faulty.