Carts on but will not move

[JohnnieB]

The caps pull out. They have a float attached. The float is supposed to shut off water from the fill tubing when fluid in cell is at proper level, but the floats have a bad habit of sticking.

Attached is a Voltage vs SoC (State of Charge) chart for Trojan brand batteries. Voltage is take 12 hours after charger shuts off.

At 36.8V, your batteries are only a bit over 60% charged.

[JohnnieB]

Here is a picture that shows the cap out of the cell, plus a few more showing the chain-fires that can happen when the batteries are connected together with tubing.

[Fairtax4me]

I dunno what the white wire is for, but it should not be connected to the main fuse. That fuse has a higher melt point than the wire does. That's also not the intended purpose or placement for that fuse. That is the main power fuse for the Alltrax controller, and is supposed to go inline with the main power supply going to the solenoid.

The best place to mount it is on the main Positive to the solenoid. It should not be mounted to the battery, because it will corrode and that will cause problems later on. Those fuses are about $35 each.

[JohnnieB]

That white wire is from the charge receptacle and is often connected to the main positive terminal via a 50A or 60A fuse. I can't read the ampacity of the fuse in the picture, so it might be a ANN250 or ANN400 instead of a ANN60. (ANN fuses are available from 10A thru 800A)

As for the the placement of the high current fuse, I put it on the controller's B- terminal when I was running a DCX controller, but the solenoid's battery side large terminal is a good spot also.

[nickdalzell1]

With the XCT, if the solenoid clicks but doesn't make good contact internally it will throw the low voltage code you're getting. There's sadly no specific error for 'failed solenoid that still clicks'

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by nickdalzell1

With the XCT, if the solenoid clicks but doesn't make good contact internally it will throw the low voltage code you're getting. There's sadly no specific error for 'failed solenoid that still clicks'

The trick to using error codes as a troubleshooting tool is the understanding of what criteria triggers the error code. The low voltage error is triggered when the voltage on the XCT's B+ terminal is lower than the voltage the Under Voltage slider is set to when the solenoid contact are supposed to be closed and there are several sets of circumstances where those conditions can exist.

Without external sensors or test leads, I cannot think of any way to specifically identify a 'failed solenoid that still clicks' error, but it would be nice if the CPU could identify specific failures.

[nickdalzell1]

Club cars and Curtis RXVs have specific codes:

MAIN DROPOUT

SOLENOID WELDED

MAIN CONTACTOR DID NOT CLOSE

While a controller as advanced as an Alltrax XCT just has one generic error that's 90% incorrect. "Battery under voltage". You'd think the manual would at least suggest the solenoid could be a culprit but it just assumes batteries are the issue.

[JohnnieB]

MAIN CONTACTOR DID NOT CLOSE could also mean the solenoid coil is bad or the coil driver in the controller is bad or the pedal switch is bad.

I agree the "were to look - what to check" statements associated with the error code could be a lot better, but I also know that tech writers rarely talk to the engineers that defined the error flag criteria and a lot of pertinent information is consigned to the editor's wastebasket.

Having verified and validated some service manuals for some communications systems for DoD, I suspect I read between the lines more and not as upset by their shortcomings.

[beanman]

I got the Alltrax software see photo. The Solenoid isn’t clicking any more. I believe isn’t faulty I’m going to replace it hopefully that fixes it.

[beanman]

Could I put my stock solenoid back on to test?