36V Club Car - 55 Watt bulbs burning out

[jfoerch]

Hey all. I have a 36V Club Car and I'm having problems with the headlights.

First I wired them (headlights and taillights) up off of two 6V batteries in series. They worked at first and then after a little driving, they went out completely. Upon investigation, I found one of the wires totally fried.

So, I did a little reading and decided to wire in a 36V to 12V 10 Amp voltage reducer from the full 36V bank and then only feed the headlights and taillights with that voltage reducer. Again, the lights worked at first and for a little while. I tried to test them by turning them on and off a bunch of times and all was well. Then I went for a ride and with some acceleration, they went out again. When I checked them out this time, the taillights are fine, but both headlights have the filament burned out.

Any idea what I could be doing wrong? Do I need higher wattage bulbs since the 55W bulbs only need a little more than 4 Amps and maybe the 10 coming out of the voltage reducer is too much for them?

Just looking for some advice. Thanks in advance.

check to see if blubs are 12v .... i had a set that were 6v

[Raystar57]

As CTD says check the voltage rating of the bulbs.

The bulbs will only draw what current they demand.

The voltage reducer just supplies that current if needed.

Now if the reducer is bad somehow and putting out excessive voltage that could be a problem.

[Mooncarter]

Have you got a photo of your reducer setup?

[jfoerch]

Update. The voltage reducer just made a pop and then started my golf cart seat on fire. All wires leading to and from the reducer are fried. So, I pulled the reducer off and capped the wires until I can figure out what happened or what I need to do differently.

Perhaps it was a bad idea, but I screwed the voltage reducer to the underside of the seat because I couldn't find an alternative place to mount it.

Also, not sure if the voltage reducer was crap or not. It was like $15 on Amazon.

I'll try to get some pictures but I must be doing something wrong. It seemed so simple... reduce the 36V down to 12 and wire in the lights. I'm seriously confused.

Thanks for the comments. Let me know if I can provide any more information.

first don't attach reducer to seat it gets hot just working
when you get on let us know so we can get it wired right

[jfoerch]

I checked and the bulbs are 12V, 55W, so that checks out.

It seems like the issue has something to do with acceleration. Both when I had the bulbs wired up to the 6V batteries in series and when I used the voltage reducer, it seems like when I accelerated, the lights got brighter and then burned out.

I'm not sure what I was doing when the voltage reducer fried.

If I get another reducer, is there a recommended version I should buy or should it be OK to go with the $15 Amazon version again?

[Gregorio]

Originally Posted by jfoerch

If I get another reducer, is there a recommended version I should buy or should it be OK to go with the $15 Amazon version again?

http://www.cartsunlimited.net/12v-reducers.html

While your symptoms are very strange, the reducer blowing up might not be related. You got what I expected from your $15 amazon purchase. I have the reducer from Carts Unlimited that has an input tolerance up to 60V while providing a stable 12.7V output no matter what.

[jakesnake27]

Get a CU reducer and never worry about it again. Mount it somewhere in the battery compartment on metal. This should solve all of your problems of bulb blowing, wires melting, etc.

[Mooncarter]

IDK. If the lights got brighter while accelerating which would mean lower voltage to the reducer, sounds like a bad negative to me. Searching for "ground?"

No expert here, but I have seen this with AC.

Experts?