discharger?

[stoker]

we have fleet of 75 carts here all 48V.equally divided between 6V,8V and 12V.
how does a discharger test batts and does it single out one in pack?I deally i would like a load tester that does a pack and can single out or readout individual voltages while climbing steep hill.
https://www.shop.fsip.biz/en/product...5a--94-DCP3648

[scottyb]

A discharger is not going to give individual battery test results. It will ID a weak pack - then you can clip a meter onto each battery and run up a hill or somehow load the pack.

[stoker]

Originally Posted by scottyb

A discharger is not going to give individual battery test results. It will ID a weak pack - then you can clip a meter onto each battery and run up a hill or somehow load the pack.

thanks Scotty,need a meter that can do eight 6V batts simultainously..eight meters going would be crazy and i dont haqve that many

[CP241]

Get an 8 channel oscilloscope, plug it into your laptop, and you can make 1 run up the hill and watch all of the batteries at the same time (and even log the data). I recommend 8 channels because you said you have carts with 8 6v batteries, and you could still watch all of them at the same time. For the other carts that only have 4 or 6 batteries, you just have some extra channels you aren't using :)

I've never used this brand before, but it's cheap and since you don't need anything with super precise calibration, sample rate, etc. it would probably work perfectly fine. As with anything, you get what you pay for. Pico makes great stuff and what I would generally recommend, but much, much more expensive. However, for something as basic as just watching a battery voltage as you drive up a hill, I don't think you'd have any issues with a cheap scope.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BSR98KW..._MPsMCbV5361KA

[Sergio]

The only issue is that those cheap oscilloscopes don't provide isolated channel inputs so you cannot use them to simultaneously look at individual batteries.

[CP241]

Ok, may have to fork over more $ for a better one, I didnt look too closely at the one I linked, but if I had 75 carts to go through, I'd still say money well spent!

[Fairtax4me]

Maybe Clamp your voltmeter leads to one battery at a time like everyone else does?
Test drive, move to next battery...

Most Load testers are pretty useless for golf cart batteries. There are some that are designed to deep cycle but they’re expensive and don’t tell you anything different than a Voltmeter will. Put a Voltmeter on the pack, drive the cart, watch the voltage change.

A capacitive battery tester will give you a better idea of battery health than any load tester will, but very few operate on 6V. Most are designed for 12v batteries, but will still work on 8v batteries.

[stoker]

thanks for help,appreciate it

[TahoeDawgZ71]

A discharge machine will absolutely help you identify a bad battery, and is standard procedure per Club Car's dealer battery test procedure. I spent 14 years working for a Club Car dealership, with the majority of those years being Service Manager. I was in charge of all of the battery tests at all of the local golf courses that were having issues. This was a busy time, as the 12 volt batteries were still very plentiful in fleet cars and there were tons of battery failures. The first step would be to charge the battery pack fully. This was obviously a hard task for the cart crew to complete. I've had many golf pros fuss at me for leaving their facility without checking batteries because they forgot to plug them in the night before. If I was fortunate enough to start with a charged car, a specific gravity test was then performed on every battery. If the specific gravity varied too much between cells (I can't remember the exact variation now) we would automatically replace that battery, charge and re-test. If all batteries passed the specific gravity test we would perform a discharge test with Club Car's discharge machine. It varied a little bit from the one in your link but performs the same task. I can't remember the amp draw of the OEM Discharger but if a battery pack discharged for 60 minutes before it reached the cutoff voltage of 42 volts under load. If a battery pack reaches 42 volts and shuts the machine down before 60 minutes all you have to do is turn the machine back on and check the batteries with a meter while the machine is running. If you have a battery dropping low in voltage you'll be able to easily identify it with your multimeter.

If you're looking for an easy way of doing it, I saw a contraption that one of the engineers at Club Car had built. It was a wooden board with six multimeters strapped to it. Each multimeter had leads with alligator clips on the end and they clipped them to the terminals of all six batteries in the pack. The meters were then set to the "minimum voltage detected" setting and the discharge procedure was started. When the discharge process was over you could walk over to the cart and look at the meters and see the lowest voltage of each battery during the discharge. It saved a lot of time. If you've got a lot of cart this may be something to consider.