98 Club Car, charger pegged out?

[Mooncarter]

Originally Posted by Tom47

As Mooncarter asks, I'm sure your meter is inaccurate. If it is not a digital meter, or a cheap one, you really don't know what you have in each battery.

Use a quality digital voltmeter and you can be sure the readings are accurate. I'm sure you have over 8 volts per battery and over 48 volts across the pack.

Yes. And if it was going to zero amps and shutting off, he didn't have a problem to start with.

[Fairtax4me]

I figured “pegged out” to mean the ammeter needle is all the way at the Top of the gauge, which is pretty normal for the PD3.
The ammeter tops at 15 amps but the charger will still run 16-17 amps if the pack is discharged.

[Mooncarter]

Originally Posted by Fairtax4me

I figured “pegged out” to mean the ammeter needle is all the way at the Top of the gauge, which is pretty normal for the PD3.
The ammeter tops at 15 amps but the charger will still run 16-17 amps if the pack is discharged.

Yes. If that's what he means. Might be the other way.

[SCdeebo]

And maybe the battery tester is off, I couldnt find my multimeter but will try later today. By pegged out I mean it registers 15 but went as far to the right as possible and never tapered down to zero. I left it plugged in for an hour or so just to see what it would do and it was back on zero, nothing in between if that makes sense. I have a picture but not sure how to post it, sorry.

[mrgolf]

Ok so are you saying the charger is working now? ???

[SCdeebo]

No sir, still not working but i did find my multimeter and found out analog load tester isnt accurate as you guys already said. here is what i found:

Starting with battery that has the initial ground wire volts are as follows:
7.93, 7.86,7.88,7.98,7.94,7.92

Across the entire set im getting 47.6

I will take charger apart on my lunch break and check what Fairtax4me suggested today.
Really do thank you guys for taking the time to help, stuff like this keeps me up at night lol

[Sergio]

Don't bother testing the charger if it can deliver 15+amps to the batteries, it is working fine.

If the current is dropping to 0 amps within a few minutes of the charging, the issue is the OBC is not able to measure charging current.

Make sure there is a single wire/cable on the pack negative battery post and that the cable goes through the OBC and connects to controller B- terminal.

During the first charging stage (Constant current), the OBC will keep the current at maximum until the pack voltage reaches about 57v.

At that point the OBC switches to the "Absorption phase" (Constant Voltage) and starts reducing the current while the voltage stays around 57v.

Once the OBC has returned enough energy to the batteries (as it has previously calculated) or the current gets to a low preset limit (but still above 5 amps), the OBC allows the pack voltage to slowly raise until it gets to 60+v.

[SCdeebo]

It was working but showed well past 15 on the meter, now it wont do anything at all. Thanks ill see what i can find

Would you advise temporarily bypassing the OBC to see if the charger kicks on?

[Mooncarter]

Did you do what Sergio told you to do?

[Fairtax4me]

Originally Posted by SCdeebo

It was working but showed well past 15 on the meter, now it wont do anything at all. Thanks ill see what i can find

Would you advise temporarily bypassing the OBC to see if the charger kicks on?

How far past?
Like I said before, its common for the PD3 to charge off the end of the guage at 16-17 amps, possibly more depending on your batteries and how discharged they are.
But if there's a problem with the charging circuit or OBC, something could have burned out, and is why the charger no longer works.