EZ GO TXT Battery Meter question

[dizzieweezie]

I'm new to the forum and new to golf carts. My wife wanted a meter on her txt so when shes out by herself she knows how much juice she has left to get home on.

I installed an analog meter that uses color. Hooked up it reads in the white for needing a charge. This after it was charged last week and only run a little bit. With charger plugged in it moved the needle to the far right side of the white.

Running the charger for 3 hours didn't do anything to change the meter. When I ran the cart down the road the needle just moved out to the white but stayed close to the white.

Any ideas on whats happening?

Bob

analog meters suck

if it was jarred it may be out of wack
you might want to look into a digital meter

http://www.cartsunlimited.net/battery-led-meters.html

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by dizzieweezie

I'm new to the forum and new to golf carts. My wife wanted a meter on her txt so when shes out by herself she knows how much juice she has left to get home on.

I installed an analog meter that uses color. Hooked up it reads in the white for needing a charge. This after it was charged last week and only run a little bit. With charger plugged in it moved the needle to the far right side of the white.

Running the charger for 3 hours didn't do anything to change the meter. When I ran the cart down the road the needle just moved out to the white but stayed close to the white.

Any ideas on whats happening?

Bob

Sounds like the analog meter is operating normally, but the colored scale is not being interpreted correctly.

The "CHG" on the colored scale in the attached picture stands for "Charging" rather than needs to be charged.

The needle in the attached picture is at the lowest voltage end of the scale and as a higher voltage is measured, the needle will move further to the right with the highest voltage measurable being in the red sliver to the right of the white section.

In a nutshell, when a battery is being charged, the on-charge voltage is higher than what the voltage of a fully charged battery is at-rest.

When the charger is connected, the needle will eventually climb into the white area and may climb into the red area further to the right with some chargers.

After the charger shuts off, the needle will gradually move to the left and about 12 hours later it should line up with the rightmost side of the green section, which should indicate 38.2V.

Ideally the leftmost side of the green section should be 36.3V, which is 50% SoC (State of Charge) and as far as golf cart batteries ought to be routinely discharged if a maximum usable lifespan of the batteries is desired.

The point at which she needs to head home when she's out and about, will be somewhere in the green section of the colored scale. Exactly where in the green section that point is, will require some experimentation to determine.

Personally, I like analog meters used as "Fuel Gauges" for non-technical people, but they do need to be compared to a DVM to find out what voltage they read at what point on the their scale.

[dizzieweezie]

Thank you both for your answers. JohnnieB I wish the meter had come with as complete a set of guidelines as you gave. Fully explained what we were seeing. We will look at changing to digital at some point but we are learning our way and making changes as we learn each new thing. Thanks again.

[dizzieweezie]

JohnnieB excellent answer and yes, I was reading the meter backwards. Didn't cure the problem I'm trying to troubleshooter but definitely marked the battery charge as not being the issue. Will post under a new question as I continue to trouble shoot.