Another NEWB question for you guys...1st time Club Car owner, is this right?

[gatorsteeler]

Picked up an '84 Club Car 36v from my Aunt in NC and brought it down to FL with me. She had told me it needed new batteries, but came to find out it had NO batteries inside. I have NO experience with these things.
Quick descriptive overview of this particular car since I can't post pics (waiting for a firearm takes 3 days, but have to wait 7 days to post pics on a forum)...

This car is the model with 5 solenoids accompanied by a large coiled resistor and is located between battery compartment and the motor. There is a headlights switch left of steering column on the dash. It also has a Curtis electric "fuel" gauge. All wires and cables were left attached (minus all the batteries hookups). I purchased 6 new 6v Powertron batteries and connecting cables. I started with the negative cable coming from motor to the battery closest to driver's seat and also attached wire from charger input and a smaller black wire that came from a cluster coming from front of car. Then went in order from + to - all the way to the battery closest to passenger's seat. I attached a small red wire from the under carriage leading from the front of car to the last battery and two red positive cable from the Forward/Reverse switch- 1 to the 4th battery in sequence from the battery I started with, and 1 to the last battery (I had to swap those later because reverse was faster than forward lol). So after that everything seemed to drive fine, no jumping or weird things like that. The only thing is, and its probably an easy fix, the switch with a red dot light that I'm guessing is for the cars lights does not turn on. Also, the battery gauge is staying on permanently. Can anyone tell me what the black wire I put on the first battery and the red wire put on the last battery is? Should I move them? How should my light switch be hooked up and is the battery gauge supposed to be on full time? Thanks for any help, it would have been easier for me to post pics but I hope I explained it good enough!

[89GatorClub]

Check out the sticky area up above on the correct wiring. If reverse is faster than forward you have something wired wrong. If wired correctly reverse should be half the speed of forward. Lights will not work unless also properly hooked up to 12 volts only ...3 way to do this use batteries(at 6volts) or use a reducer from 36 to 12 volts( this uses the whole battery pack). Last option would be to purchase a seperate 12 volt battery. I would use the reducer.

[89GatorClub]

Don't know if this will help you, but this is when I first bought my 89 Cart

[gatorsteeler]

yes that looks like mine as far as batteries and cables go..what are the additional wires on the negative terminal cluster there on the battery top left of pic? mine is set up the same way but IDK what is doing what except that the fatter white one is from the charger input.
Same goes for the additional red wire on the positive post on top right..what do these all do lol

Is my battery gauge supposed to stay on permanently?

[89GatorClub]

Originally Posted by gatorsteeler

yes that looks like mine as far as batteries and cables go..what are the additional wires on the negative terminal cluster there on the battery top left of pic? mine is set up the same way but IDK what is doing what except that the fatter white one is from the charger input.
Same goes for the additional red wire on the positive post on top right..what do these all do lol

Is my battery gauge supposed to stay on permanently?

If now one answers before I look at my drawings I made up before I swapped everthing to 48 v. (My memory sucks) I will let you know what each wire does and where it should go.

On the battery guage, sounds like they wired it in before the key switch. You would need to take the dash apart and see how it is wired up.

[gatorsteeler]

thanks for your insight...i figured one of the black wires and the lone red wire accompanying the main positive was for the battery gauge, which is a old looking Curtis meter with red vertical light bar. Probably not a big deal, I dont see it draining any life.
I did put in new batteries on 4/13/13, did some medium driving roughly 20-30min straight and the battery gauge has not budged from the very top of full.
does that sound normal?

meter won't draw that much amps but you could wire it to come on with key
where in fl ??

this may help

[gatorsteeler]

I'll pull out the dash and see whats going on in there, thanks for taking the time to post that