us batteries

[toxicwaste29]

I have seen way more us batteries with cracked cases and melted posts than I have trojan. Sure batteries arent meant to freeze but the trojans hold their cases more than the us from what I have seen. They seem to have thinner cases than the trojans. I cant explain though for how they were cared for so I can only go off what I have seen.

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by rlw

I bought 'em at Battery Giant in Lancaster, after talking the guy down from $110 a pop. There's a golf cart store in Heath (near Newark) that had 'em for $85 a piece. I could only get the Battery Giant guy down to $90. It was worth the $30 to NOT drive to Heath (only about 30 miles from me, but a P-I-T-A).

This was 2 years ago, so things may have changed.

Mid Ohio Golf Cars
2333 Hebron Rd, Heath, OH 43056
(740) 929-4633

Battery Giant
1412 Ety Rd NW, Lancaster, OH 43130
(740) 277-7123

From their store locator, it looks like the closest one to you is the Lancaster store. There's one in Pittsburgh and one in Cincy.

I've always thought their prices were high for everything and was a little surprised they'd dicker. If he'd only gone down to $100 a pop, I'd have made the drive to Heath.

RLW

Thanks for the info. The dealer locators of many of the battery manufacturers only drill down to regional distributors and I need eyes on the ground to find "local" vendors. I''ll contact them for pricing, but I can get T-875's for about $135 each in Jackson, so they would have to beat that considerable to offset the travel expenses.

I'm kicking around the idea of going from 42V to 48V since the controller I'm now using has user adjustable RPM limiting and planning to use 8V batteries with about a 170AH rating since my range requirements have been reduced considerably due to changes in local ordinances. My plan is the limit my motor RPM to 6.5k, which is 26.5 MPH on my 17" tires, and minimize the speed loss on the hills I encounter while cruising the roads it is still legal to drive a golf cart on.

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by cartattach

Thanks for breaking it down JohnnieB. I will take this up with my rep during his next visit.

Let me know what you find out.

Here is some more reading material.

http://usbattery.com/diagnosing-batt...rger-problems/
Second from the last paragraph on webpage is interesting.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...Kf_IpkYPaemnSw
This is the court case of Crown vs Club Car, but the suit is based on the fact that Club Car did not disclose the legal battle they had with US Battery over their OBC charging systems inability to properly charge US Battery batteries in Club Cars.

Attached is a copy of USB's charging recommendations. Check the finish voltage for single stage (Ferro) chargers.
It specifies 2.55V +/- 0.5V, which is 45.0V to 46.8V for a 36V pack or 60.0V to 62.4V for a 48V pack, and many of the legacy chargers shut off before that voltage is reached. Newer chargers that use dV/dT technology to terminate the charge cycle don't turn off at a preset voltage and tend to reach the recommended finish voltage.

Also, some of the newer chargers have specific charge profile for different battery manufactures and if batteries made by different manufacturers didn't need different charge profiles, why build charges with manufacturer specific charge profiles?

[cartattach]

Originally Posted by toxicwaste29

I have seen way more us batteries with cracked cases and melted posts than I have trojan. Sure batteries arent meant to freeze but the trojans hold their cases more than the us from what I have seen. They seem to have thinner cases than the trojans. I cant explain though for how they were cared for so I can only go off what I have seen.

As far as I know, Trojan is the only company who actively replaces the post in their meltdowns.....probably because they have the most of them. I see 10x the number of trojan's with a screw in the post as any other battery maker. For $30 the local guy replaces them post after meltdown. But of course, any battery will meltdown when not properly maintained

And Johnnie my rep is coming by tomorrow and I'm going to barrage him with all that info. I will note that they do sell chargers, and they sell the DPI Accusense models.

[MudHog]

I'm in the market for 8V batteries for my EZGO project. I had bought 6V USB batteries for my Club Car and liked the batteries, but the CC was my first ever cart so I had nothing to compare against.

Local prices here is $114 each for the redtop 8V USB.

I don't have any batteries so I will have to pay core charges, but am working to scrounge up 12v auto batteries. One dealer is $114 per battery but 1.5:1 12v auto core ratio. Another dealer is $116 per batter but 1:1 12v auto core ratio. I'm going to call a couple of the local scrap yards and see if I can buy a couple junk batteries. I have 2-3 in the shop, so I only need to find 3-4.

I need a charger, so I'm going to look at the DPI chargers.

[cartattach]

$114 isn't a bad price. Funny thing, people don't realize how much cores are worth until they need them. 6 and 8 volt cores are $25 and 12V are $30-$32

JohnnieB
My rep didn't come by, but my normal delivery guy did. We conversed for a while about the whole thing, and he said most of that info we are talking about is taken from the fact that many battery manufacturers will say something like only use our charger (or our preferred charger) as way to sell more chargers. We also discussed the level of charge and he said he wasn't aware of any incidence where a battery wasn't warranted from our distributor based on method of charge. As a matter of fact, he had just warranted a 12v that had exploded. US corporate had this distributor warrant the battery. It was over 5 years old, and very apparently had been run and charged completely dry. But they replaced it free of charge. He is going to have my rep round up some info based on the links you posted and dig deeper into the underlying issue in order to get us some resolve. I think part of it is just some dealers being jackwagons about warranting things, whereas like mine tends to warrant just about anything. They also give an 18 month warranty on all cart batteries sold.

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by cartattach

JohnnieB
My rep didn't come by, but my normal delivery guy did. We conversed for a while about the whole thing, and he said most of that info we are talking about is taken from the fact that many battery manufacturers will say something like only use our charger (or our preferred charger) as way to sell more chargers. We also discussed the level of charge and he said he wasn't aware of any incidence where a battery wasn't warranted from our distributor based on method of charge. As a matter of fact, he had just warranted a 12v that had exploded. US corporate had this distributor warrant the battery. It was over 5 years old, and very apparently had been run and charged completely dry. But they replaced it free of charge. He is going to have my rep round up some info based on the links you posted and dig deeper into the underlying issue in order to get us some resolve. I think part of it is just some dealers being jackwagons about warranting things, whereas like mine tends to warrant just about anything. They also give an 18 month warranty on all cart batteries sold.

To put this into perspective, I'm not talking about battery warranty issues such as melted posts, cracked cases, failures due to manufacturing defects or failures due to user abuse. I'm talking about cart owners not getting all the performance they paid for from their batteries because the charger they are using is chronically undercharging their batteries.

It is more of a charger issue rather than a battery issue.

If you have a legacy charger such as a Powerwise, Powerwise+, Powerwise II, Totalcharge, Totalcharge II, Totalcharge III, Totalcharge IV, etc.; It is designed to charge your 36V battery pack to an At-Rest voltage of 38.2V.

If you have Trojan batteries, or Trojan battery clones, they will be charged to 100% SoC at that At-Rest voltage.

If you have US Battery batteries, they will only be charged to 95% SoC at that At-Rest voltage (38.5V is 100% SoC for them)

That means you'll have 5% less run-time and have to buy replacement batteries 5% sooner.

------------------

FWIW: If you have Exide Battery batteries, they will only be charged to 97% SoC at that At-Rest voltage (38.3V is 100% SoC for them), so the problem isn't unique to US Battery.

[cartattach]

Ok Johnnie I have made a little headway. I spoke to my rep as he specifically came by to find out what it was I was curious about. (he had been out of town on a training seminar)

When I showed him the text of the thread, we discussed the parts he was versed in and then sent the main tech guy a link to it so he could read it over and get back to me in more detail

As to the part about the Crown vs Club Car thing.....as I understood what he told me Club Car has gone through this same issue with Trojan, USB, and now Crown. It is supposedly known that the issue is with the workings of the OBC and that bypassing the OBC and use of a self contained smart charger solves the issue. However, since obviously no one is going to take well the thought of having to get a $400ish charger when they have a good charger already, US lists that little caveat on their site. Even with that caveat, they maintain the warranty as normal should an issue arise. It sounds like the charge may fall short in the .2V - .5V range if I understood correctly. (and I may not have understood exactly right) Either way, I emailed the tech guy, my rep, and my alternate email account so I'll be sure to catch the response. As soon as I do, I will report back with his info. Just wanted you to know that I am still working on this behind the scenes I haven't forgotten

[JohnnieB]

Looking forward to Fred's reply.