More FSIP Duds, this is getting old!

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by Mooncarter

Thank you JB!

Glad to help.

[nickdalzell1]

Our shop is in the middle or rural country so 99% of our customers are (unfortunately for me) hunters, farmers and the kinds of folks you'd expect to see as characters on Green Acres (namely, Mr. Haney, Eb, Fred Ziffel and his pig, and of course, Hank Kimball) only it's not so funny in real life.

Basically guys with hardly cash for gas for the F-100 they roll up in with a rear end from another truck as a trailer. They almost always get financing through the company we partner with.

So that's the type of cheapskates we deal with. They won't pay for an Alltrax. They're great controls, but are expensive to keep and customers absolutely refuse to pay the extra price. They won't even understand that they will buy a new Powerwise QE in a year or two for $130. that adds up fast. But they only see what they pay now. the $130 for the garbage or the $450 you pay once for the good charger. They always go for a rebuilt QE. Same thing regarding controls.

We are going to try Red Hawk, as they apparently rebuild and are a bit cheaper than FSIP. I guess only time will tell. But I still want resistor carts back. Controller carts the most common failure point is the controller. I especially despise EZGO and their RXV. The Danaher versions weren't so bad and seemed far more robust. The Curtis variants, on the other hand, are touchy and total garbage. Tons more codes for various failures and not all covered by the manual either. I'm left guessing and throwing parts until something works most times.

We do have disclaimers all over the shop--including "if you work on it yourself, it's your fault". We have made a display of a melted RXV controller from one of the Rural King specials with a note "This is why you do NOT skimp on batteries or buy Rural Kings!" similar to the melted VHS tape with the note "this is why you don't leave rented movies in a hot car" that movie rental places once did.

I wish it was just the 1 year or less life span of Rural Kings (and other cheap batteries, including BLEM, no-names (just black batteries without a date or name), Duracell or Energizer (only that in name-only) or any other that I don't recognize) but unfortunately two carts actually caught fire from them. Low voltage + steep hills/off-road use = heat and fire.

Yamaha G9 electric--melted resistor board, open resistor bank (that's not cheap--$249! for being rare) and burned up accelerator contact board.

36V Club Car electric from the late 80s. Melted and burned up everything except the motor or frame. That one took awhile. Tons of labor costs.

And a new third one just rolled in--we had just put in a rebuilt engine and I noted they had a 2012 (!!) Rural King 12V battery jammed in there on the repair order, that didn't even fit the mount properly. Customer said 'it's a good battery! it holds charge'

Welp, just Friday evening it rolled in with the rear body melted where the battery was, basically caught on fire. The harness, body, seat, rocker panel, floorboard and F/R cables are ruined. Engine seems to be ok. They said they had just got off, heard something go BOOM, and it was on fire. They were blaming us, but their adjuster said the battery had exploded. Gosh. Darn. Rural. King!!!!!!

I don't look forward to fixing that cart. I hope it's totaled.

[scottyb]

Good Luck, That is a tough market to service. At least RH has a real customer service division. They have handled our returns & failures well over the years. I can't say the same for the other company.

[nickdalzell1]

The only faulty-in box item from Red Hawk thus far from our end are carburetors. Pretty much same results as with Nivel--order 10, 7 are duds. We've been getting carburetors from Amazon lately with covid delays.

Another cart just came today with a set of November 2020 Rural Kings and are all completely dead (pack voltage is at 1.5V) and there's a burning odor and sure enough, all the wires from the accelerator contact board to the resistor bank are baked and melted together. Solenoid is also melted. Movable contact is also arced all to heck.

Please, people, stop skimping on batteries! It's not worth it!

[scottyb]

Originally Posted by nickdalzell1

The only faulty-in box item from Red Hawk thus far from our end are carburetors. Pretty much same results as with Nivel--order 10, 7 are duds. We've been getting carburetors from Amazon lately with covid delays.

Another cart just came today with a set of November 2020 Rural Kings and are all completely dead (pack voltage is at 1.5V) and there's a burning odor and sure enough, all the wires from the accelerator contact board to the resistor bank are baked and melted together. Solenoid is also melted. Movable contact is also arced all to heck.

Please, people, stop skimping on batteries! It's not worth it!

That sounds like a resistor coil drive system failure. Any battery will die if drained down too far. Just saying ... batteries do not cause melted throttle wires. Speed wipers do. BUt again I haven't seen the cart just going by your description. GL with the carts.

[nickdalzell1]

Rural King batteries are meant to crank your McCormick Farmall tractor from the 1940s up on a cold morning.

When you put low-Amp Hour capacity batteries into a resistor car (which is admittedly lower in efficiency than a solid-state) and do a lot of driving uphill, off-road on the farm, eventually the cart calls for more power, but the batteries can't deliver, and things start to heat up. Low voltage and hard demand = heat which sometimes leads to fire. Or baked wiring. What it looks like is that two of the wires going to the resistors went open, which meant the cart went from stop to full throttle and that causes a lot of arcing on the contact board/wiper. I've seen a lot of V-glides EOL'd that way as well. Probably parked it when it stopped working correctly and didn't charge the batteries all winter and they just lost their charge.

[ojo]

Thank you for the positive comment about the Danaher controller nickdalzell, not any issue since 3.5 years!

[Mooncarter]

Am I understanding you are saying these batteries are 8 volt starting batteries like the ones people used to use on old 6 volt systems?

[scottyb]

Originally Posted by Mooncarter

Am I understanding you are saying these batteries are 8 volt starting batteries like the ones people used to use on old 6 volt systems?

Can't be, very different plate construction. I think somebody is just venting now

[nickdalzell1]

They're just six volt batteries. They're sold at Rural King (but Exide makes the battery) and intended to be in some old 6 volt tractor. Or connected to series to make a 12V tractor start. They're not meant for golf carts.