Club Car DS reverse problem

[georgia088]

I have a friend that just got a non working club car ds 2001. Batteries were completely dead. It had sat for a while. He got in charged and going, but now the reverse is not working properly. Best I can tell through questions it is a Sepex motor. He says it has a push button (switch) for f/r, but he says there is no run/tow switch... This doesn't make sense to me unless he is just over looking it...

He says it goes fine in forward, but the reverse is not working. He says if nobody is on the cart and you barely press the pedal down with it switched to reverse, it will "creep" backwards, but if you press the pedal all the way down or if someone sits on it, it won't do anything.

Sounds to me like it is getting it's "reverse power" from the small wires, but the controller/solenoid is not engaging the high amp wires to power the motor properly.... Any ideas?

Thanks

[Fairtax4me]

Doesn't really work that way. On any controller cart the controller handles 100% of the power supplied to create motion.
This is bad connection, dead dead battery pack, or a bad controller.

Really need to find out exactly what controller is in it to really go further. Any sepex cart should have a Tow/run switch unless someone has removed it, in which case we might have a pandoras box of "modifications" to the wire harness.

Look at the motor terminals. If it has A and F labels on the posts it will be a sepex cart.
If it has A and S labels it will be Series.

[georgia088]

@Fairtax4me Thanks!
But if it were bad connection or bad batteries wouldn’t it cause the cart not to run correctly in forward? I was leaning toward a bad controller myself. How would I test?
Thanks!

[georgia088]

I have gotten the numbers off of the controller. They are 1205m-5605. Google says this is a series controller I think.... which is strange bc he says he has a rocker type switch for f/r? Maybe it has been modded to do away with the f/r series lever type switch?

With it being a series type cart, I would think the f/r is changed with something other than the controller, but I don’t know.
Thanks!

[Goober11]

Originally Posted by georgia088

I have gotten the numbers off of the controller. They are 1205m-5605. Google says this is a series controller I think.... which is strange bc he says he has a rocker type switch for f/r? Maybe it has been modded to do away with the f/r series lever type switch?

With it being a series type cart, I would think the f/r is changed with something other than the controller, but I don’t know.
Thanks!

Could be a regin 1 or a regin 2 system. The first regin system Club Car tried it did not do well. I think they stop make it in 2000.5
Get the serial number and look in the sticky under cart identification.

[Fairtax4me]

That's a series controller so F or R doesn't matter to the controller, the switching is done by either the FnR switch or a reversing solenoid/contactor.
That cart should have a big lever switch for FnR. Those often get corroded or have damage to the cables because they usually move with the switch as the lever is moved.

If the cart has a small rocker switch for FnR, then it may have had a reversing contactor installed which will have at least 4 cables going to it. The contactor switches the polarity of the field current for the motor to reverse direction. A bad connection at the contactor or burned contact inside can cause one direction to work fine and the other direction to not work or be jerky/slow. This will also usually be evident by burned insulation t the cables or posts of the contactor.

[georgia088]

I got a chance to look at it and it def. has a reversing contactor. The contactor is made with two spdt coils connected together with jumper wires. Each coil had 4 large posts and the two small posts to energize them. It is diffferent from any I have seen. They are wired to energize together and de energize together. Both coils have two posts that are normally opened and two that are normally closed.

There are only two wires going to the f/r rocker switch that cause the coils to energize when in reverse. When it is in forward, neither coil is energized but the normally closed terminals create the connections needed for forward. (All this is my guess...... because he said it worked in reverse before and the wiring has not changed. I am attaching drawings of how I think it could work in this manner. I’m not very smart so I had to get out the crayons for the drawing..... I’m not sure it will work like this, but maybe?? Thanks!

[JohnnieB]

I'm not familiar with CC carts and most reversing contactors use SW202, or similar, solenoids with factory installed jumpers, which necessitates one coil being energized for forward and the other energized for reverse, but by using a different jumpering arrangement it is possible to use the NC contacts on one solenoid and the NO contacts on the other to connect the stator winding in forward when neither coil is energized and in reverse when both coils are energized. Maybe it is a home-brew reversing contactor.

In any case, it worked and now it isn't.

Forward works because it is hardwired to be in forward when the solenoids are at rest (de-energized). You mentioned it tries to move in reverse, in Post #1, so both of the coils are probably being energized. That means the problem is in the solenoid contacts. I suspect there are some dirty NO contacts.

[georgia088]

Thanks!

Obviously, this is not the normal way of doing it, but because it operates without a coil energized for forward (when the cart is used the most)
Could this be a slightly better way to do it than the traditional one coil to energize for forward and one for reverse? Less wear/tear on coils and I guess even slightly less power used from the battery pack to energize coil (obviously this would probably be so litttle as to not matter)?

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by georgia088

Thanks!

Obviously, this is not the normal way of doing it, but because it operates without a coil energized for forward (when the cart is used the most)
Could this be a slightly better way to do it than the traditional one coil to energize for forward and one for reverse? Less wear/tear on coils and I guess even slightly less power used from the battery pack to energize coil (obviously this would probably be so litttle as to not matter)?

Being an efficiency nut, if I had a series drive, I might wire a pair of contactors like that. It is slightly more efficient.

On the other hand, I'm lazy, so I'd most likely use an off-the-shelf pair of contactors that were strapped at the factory for separately energized F and R solenoids.

I suspect the latter is why the separately energized F and R coil types are the types usually used. Cart owners tend to want plug-n-play kits and parts kit builders tend to share that mentality, or at least respond to it in the most profitable way.

In all honesty, I prefer sepex drives to series or AC.