Charger coming on too soon

[RKeeper1]

On Tuesday, I charged my cart and was getting help with the batteries and readings on here. Last night when I got home from work, the charger was on again... What makes the charger kick back on that soon? I have it unplugged now, afraid that I'll come home again tonight and it'll be on again! I don't feel like overcharging my brand new batteries I'm still trying to break in

[joesam]

You probably know this - but I'll take a wild a** guess. Many people when installing a new pack have accidentally put the red charger lead from the charge port on the 5th battery in the series, not all 6 - its surprisingly easy to do. Five *new* batteries can actually be "overcharged" to the voltage of 6 (for a while)...but they can't hold the over-voltage for very long before falling back to more normal voltage. Once they do, the charger would likely come back on. I know this guess doesn't necessarily tie-in to your original battery voltage posting....but worth a good look just to eliminate this weird but common occurrence.

Otherwise, resetting OBC is the only other thought that comes to my (limited) mind.

[RKeeper1]

here you can see the red wire going to the main positive post

[joesam]

WOW - that's a HUGE picture - and yes, the charge wire looks fine...so now its about the OBC or charger. It won't hurt your batteries to reset OBC and try/test once more. Might have been a quirk.

The charger amps should drop to very low levels within 10 minutes after the reset, if you don't have a battery pack issue. Do you recall when you came home and found it charging, how many amps were showing at that time?

[RKeeper1]

Originally Posted by joesam

WOW - that's a HUGE picture - and yes, the charge wire looks fine...so now its about the OBC or charger. It won't hurt your batteries to reset OBC and try/test once more. Might have been a quirk.

The charger amps should drop to very low levels within 10 minutes after the reset, if you don't have a battery pack issue. Do you recall when you came home and found it charging, how many amps were showing at that time?

The amps were at 4 on the charger whem I went to check on it last night. To reset OBC, I should unhook the main negative for 30 seconds and then put it back on?

[joesam]

Make it at least 10 minutes to be sure - 30 seconds isn't enough for the capacitors to discharge.

[RKeeper1]

Ok. So go unhook it for 10 mins, hook it back up and plug the charger back in and see what the amps do? Hopefully they are very low?

[joesam]

That's the plan. Wait at least a couple hours when you plug it back in before checking the amps - they should be really low by then (say...2-3 amps) or better still; the charger will have shut off (here's hoping).

[RKeeper1]

Originally Posted by joesam

That's the plan. Wait at least a couple hours when you plug it back in before checking the amps - they should be really low by then (say...2-3 amps) or better still; the charger will have shut off (here's hoping).

Ok, when I plugged the charger in, the orange light came on, charger went to 15 amps, to 0, then to 10. Now it's at about 6 amps. Ill come back out and see if its turned off before I go to work

[joesam]

the orange light came on, charger went to 15 amps, to 0, then to 10. Now it's at about 6 amps.

Sounds right so far - that's exactly how its supposed to work (except the orange light, but that is probably brought on by the reset).