RXV Auto-Brake Problem III

[gornoman]

The factory's only concern is that the carts they produce last as long as the first lease. Period.

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by gornoman

The factory's only concern is that the carts they produce last as long as the first lease. Period.

Until the first lease or for the duration of the first lease?

If the latter is the case, they should be concerned about us.

It is way past being funny or trivial. The day before yesterday I was on the closing shift. The day had been busy and many of the carts were on their second round.

About 2:00 PM, it started happening, and for three hours the other guy working and I didn't do anything but go out and tow in carts that died on the course. No other work got done while we were doing that, and I did not get home until after 10 PM.

Not just dying that slow death where you can limp them back in, but one had autobrake lockup and another just stopped running all at once. The autobrake one was freed up yesterday, but now won't accept a charger.

Sometimes turning the key off and back on gives them life, but the customer does not and should not have to know that.

I have been taking care of golf course carts for awhile, and I have never seen or heard of problems like this.

We're keeping a list and some are repeat offenders. But some not.

[cartboy]

This is my first Internet stop after getting home from the golf course, because the news I have to report is that important. Well, more important than other sites I visit.

An E Z Go dealer with a golf course having a similar dying cart problem reports that just this week he was notified that E Z Go has a software upgrade for early RXVs. It re-sets the point that a cart goes into limp mode from 25% charge to 7% charge. It also enhances the regen feature.

The benefit of that is obvious . . . more run per charge.

Related, that dealer and I took a look under the seat of the golf cart he was on (at our course), and, sure enough, there was a battery cable not much longer to this world. He guessed it might have another week.

It is the short blue connector cable that goes to the righthand terminal of the rear battery. It is the two rear battery terminals that generate an inordinate amount of corrosion. The connector at the end of that right hand cable is not very substantial, and right where the flat part of the connector meets the round part that goes around the cable the corrosion has eaten almost all the way through it.

You could bend it with very little effort.

Inspecting a few cart, I found some where that connector is just fine and some where the corrosion had weakened that connector.

He suggested a product they use to coat all the terminals and connectors. They do it once when the cart is new and never have to mess with it again.

[gamer1]

cartboy are any of these problems you have mentioned related to the 2010 RXV? If not (doesn't sound like it is) have you heard of any fixes Ezgo came up with for the 2010?

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by gamer1

cartboy are any of these problems you have mentioned related to the 2010 RXV? If not (doesn't sound like it is) have you heard of any fixes Ezgo came up with for the 2010?

My comments are related to the guinnea pig 2008-2009s.

I've posted somewhere up there that our dealer made a comment about the 2010s eliminating the problems in them. For instance, he mentioned the moaning and groaning noise, but just because we had just listened to it.

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by cartboy

Inspecting a few cart, I found some where that connector is just fine and some where the corrosion had weakened that connector.

He suggested a product they use to coat all the terminals and connectors. They do it once when the cart is new and never have to mess with it again.

As I mentioned before, if terminal and connector corrosion is a problem, and if the dealer/company is going to use it against the customer, & if coating the terminals and connectors once when new takes care of the problem, why don't they do it when it is easiest to do . . . at the factory?

[rabbitreborn]

Because wires are considered a "consumable" on golf carts. There are so many variables related to wire/connector deteriation it would be impossible for the factory to gaurd against every possible condition.

Case in point: The factory used to apply a terminal protectant on carts going to Florida. Any course in the central part of the state, the protectant was perfect and the corrosion was kept at a minimum. If the cart was headed to the coast however, the protectant they were applying actually reacted BADLY to the salt air and caused increased corrosion, the protectant had to be removed and a different type of terminal coat had to be applied that was better suited for "salt air" conditions and it had to be re-applied every 6 months or the terminals would corrode. We finally convinced them to stop applying it and we did it ourselves at time of delivery based on the location of the course.

There is no "one size fits all" solution for corrosion on battery wires. I have seen everything from various different types of terminal coat to vasaline applied and each different method was good based on the ambient conditions of the environment. The only suggestion I can make is to find something that works in your area and run with it.

As for the software update, that condition was arrived at because of the carts in use in "the Villages". E-Z-GO was getting massive complaints regarding the driving distance of their carts in "the Villages" and the end result was a lowering of the "software shutdown" threshold. I even said something regarding this a couple of posts/pages back I believe.

[cartboy]

Then . . . again EZ Go/dealers known it to be a problem . . . each dealer could do a coating suitable to each customer . . . exactly as the dealer I met with does.

Why do nothing when you know something needs to be done, and then blame it on the customer, who may not know what needs to be done, or that anything needs to be done until too late?

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by rabbitreborn

As for the software update, that condition was arrived at because of the carts in use in "the Villages". E-Z-GO was getting massive complaints regarding the driving distance of their carts in "the Villages" and the end result was a lowering of the "software shutdown" threshold. I even said something regarding this a couple of posts/pages back I believe.

As did I . . . Post 39.

In your Post #5, when you said the software update was available in the private field, I guess I did know what you meant by that. I did not take it to be a suggestion as to what we should do with our fleet.

Strange that you said that three months ago and that our dealer had never heard of it, and the dealer who told me just heard about it this week.

[rabbitreborn]

Originally Posted by cartboy

Then . . . again EZ Go/dealers known it to be a problem . . . each dealer could do a coating suitable to each customer . . . exactly as the dealer I met with does.

Why do nothing when you know something needs to be done, and then blame it on the customer, who may not know what needs to be done, or that anything needs to be done until too late?

Unless they have changed the paperwork since I worked for E-Z-GO, it is in the owners manual as well as documented in the "new fleet prep" packets that we used to hand out whenever delivering a new fleet of carts. I assume it to be common knowledge among anyone with any length of time working with carts that the battery terminals MUST be coated to prevent corrosion.

As for the individual dealers, while E-Z-GO has some control over the carts they sell, the reality is that each dealer operates an independant company and E-Z-GO is not liable for a dealer that fails to inform their customers of required periodic maintenence.