Battery Order

[Ronno6]

A person who claims to be very knowledgeable in lead-acid golf cart batteries told me that the batteries should be arranged in order according to their relative health.
That is to say, the battery with the highest full charge voltage should be #1, the battery whose positive terminal is connected to the motor or speed control, and the weakest should be #6 at the negative end. the others are arranged from strongest to weakest in positions 2 thru 5.

Do y'all agree?

[_ogre]

never heard that. using that analogy, the weakest battery wouldn't take the negative flow that the best battery sent thru the motor

[sthreatt]

Also never heard that. Me personally, I see no rational logic to support that. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

[Fairtax4me]

Never heard of that either.
The weakest battery is always the bottleneck. It doesn't really matter where it is, because current still has to flow through all of the batteries regardless of where they are in the series. Whichever battery is the weakest is generally the one with the highest internal resistance, and is such the bottleneck where the current flow is decreased.

Ideally, all batteries should be within a few hundreths of a volt. On paper each battery should charge and discharge at exactly the same rate, but in reality they simply can not due to the dozens of different variables that affect battery voltage and capacity. If you have a battery with more than 0.10v (one tenth) difference than the other batteries, that battery should be charged by itself to attempt to bring the voltage back up.
Depending on what kind of charger you have, you can also do an equalization charge to try to balance out the voltage of all of the batteries.

[CP241]

Agree that doesn’t make sense.

They’re all in series with one another. Just like any other series circuit. Perhaps an oversimplification but that’s about the same as saying if you put a 100, 120, and 200 ohm resistor in a circuit together, putting them in a different order would change the overall R value of the circuit (which it wouldn’t)

[Budule]

even if i saw proof that it did make a difference, no way im tugging on that heavy lead to rearrange it.... back going out would negate any savings i might gain...

[Ronno6]

I'm gonna put an 8v battery desulphator on the low one in an attempt to get it level with the others, then a do them all with a 48v unit. If it works, that's a bunch less than a new bank of batteries.
I figger it is worth a shot.

[Fairtax4me]

What charger do you have?
What Brand and model of batteries?
How old are they?
Also what is the voltage on each battery?

[Ronno6]

Originally Posted by Fairtax4me

What charger do you have?
What Brand and model of batteries?
How old are they?
Also what is the voltage on each battery?

They are 4 1/2 year old Duracell 8v GC8 165ah
Voltages an hour or 2 after the Club Car charger shut off were:
After full charge after 24hr
1 8.72v 8.47
2 8.45 8.17
3 8.71 8.44
4 8.69 8.40
5 8.70 8.44
6 8.70 8.43

Pretty even spread except for #2.......

[Tom47]

As far as battery order, I agree with all other comments.

Your batteries all are near end of life. Most read near 90 to 95 % SOC 24 hours after charging. I predict this would keep dropping each day. You can try to rejuvenate them which may give you more usable charge.

My 8+ year old Crowns will drop if left off the charger for a day or two. For this reason, whenever I am not driving, the DPI Accusense charger is connected. This maintains the voltage at higher than 100% until I am ready to ride the next day. The Power Drive charger may not be able to maintain voltage that way. I'm not sure.

I can still get 20 miles easily in hot weather and return to the barn with 60 to 65% SOC.