Issues with Allied Lithium packs

[a65l]

Ok, so I haven't contacted Allied yet, but they don't work the weekend so it will have to wait untill Monday.

Details.. Cart is a 36v TXT series drive. All stock.

Received my shiny new Allied lithium packs last week. Installed, charged, troubleshot a throttle then the cart ran. Forward, backward, no worries. Drove around the lot for 5 minutes then headed down the road to the mailbox (1/3 mile or so one way). All good on the way there, stopped, opened the mailbox, back on the cart and no go. I could hear the solenoid clicking, I had a loose throttle wire in the connector to the ESC so I pulled the connector and reseated it and it worked. Back to the house, drove around the lot again for a couple minutes then over to the neighbors.. and then no go. This time I didn't hear the solenoid click. Pushed back to the house, and back on the charger. It charged for about 20 minutes then off. Then it got dark, and rained the next day. Saturday AM... on the cart, key on, and off we go, no worries. Got to the end of teh driveway and no go. Pushed back to the workshop. Ok.

Multimeter out, read across the batteries. 26 volts. No good. Read across the individual batteries... 13.1, 0.14, 13.1. Ok... Perhaps we have an issue here. I disconnected all the wires, and read again. This time, 13.1 on all 3. Re-connect wires, read across batteries. 26 volts again. Well ****. Charger back on just in case.. it shows 42 volts and shuts off in a minute. Did I mention this is the Allied Lithium charger?

So I disconnected again, let it sit, and lo and behold, 13.1 on all 3. Connect batteries, 42 volts. Key on, select a direction, push the pedal.. no click from the solenoid. Multimeter... 26 volts across the cells, this time the center battery is showing 4 volts.

So... I'm thinking there's an issue with that battery... I've ohmed out the motor and it's pretty close... got good continuitity through all the switches to the solenoid... new solenoid, diode is oriented the right direction and my resistor ohms out at 251 or so.

Again, haven't been able to talk to Allied, but it really sounds to me like an issue with the one battery. So I guess I'm just comiserating here... unless someone else has had a similar adventure and there was some subtle step I've overlooked. I do not have their state of charge meter on hand yet, it shipped separately and should be here next week.

[cgtech]

They are the 12v batteries, right? Try manually charging the offending battery with a 12v automotive battery charger. They probably are just not balanced.

[a65l]

No bueno. Sat on 12V for 4 hours, showed 13.31, but as soon as I put a load (LED driving light) across it it dropped to 6V or so...

[a65l]

No real solution from Allied, but after a few minutes of troubleshooting on the phone, they're shipping me a new battery. So a couple of days and we'll know..

[a65l]

Battery on hand. Installed, charger on, clicked off in about 20 minutes. Not right. Voltage on new batt about .5 volts lower than other two batteries. Drove a bit, charger back on, waiting now to see. But lucky me, it seems I have annother issue.. but that's for a different thread...

[smokey tennis shoe]

Which AH batteries did you get? Hopefully not the 40 or 50AH.

[PearlPack]

Originally Posted by cgtech

They are the 12v batteries, right? Try manually charging the offending battery with a 12v automotive battery charger. They probably are just not balanced.

I did this very thing....worked like a charm.

[a65l]

Sorry for the late update here. Very late, actually.

Quick update is that I've been running the cart for over a year now with zero, and I mean zero problems related to the battery packs or drive system. We usually pull a small trailer around, and I go, on average, a week between charges. I've only had the cart hit low voltage cutoff once, and that was just my dumb *** not paying attention to the meters.

I did buy their battery balancer. I could have saved the 50 or so bucks and just done the parallel connect balance once in a while, but what the hell. I'm a lazy, lazy man. At some point I should put a GPS into the cart and get an actual distance on a charge, but I'm way to lazy to do that.

I actually like the packs enough that I ordered a set for the Club Car Carryall 2 that the wife just drug home... hopefully they haven't slipped on quality in the last year!