my "new" 94 marathon, and what to do first

[Jamey]

Hi I'm James, and i just brought home my first cart, a 1994 Marathon 36v. It's pretty apparent that it wasn't properly maintained if at all. The batteries are from May of 08, and were under a couple inches of green fuzz. The cables pretty much all seem shot, one battery terminal was so melted off that the cable is held on (rather securely acutally) by vice grips.

It drives nice, although it's pretty slow. I cleaned off the batteries, topped off the only one that was so low the plates were exposed, and it's on the charger now. When i picked it up the guy said he'd been using it a couple days around his place since the last charge, and all the batteries are at 6.0v (and I think i read fully charged is 7.2v?)

battery box.jpg

front of seat.jpg

marathon.jpg

What i've read about these suggest I have a series resistor cart. The FNR is on the front of the seat/battery box. I'm not seeing any coils in there that look like a classic "toaster element" type set up, so I'm a bit confused about that. Could someone tell me what I'm dealing with from the pics? Just so I'm certain?

With the one battery terminal being pretty screwed up, and the pack being 4 years old and poorly maintained, I knew when I bought it that i'd likely need batteries soon. After lurking on this site a month or more and reading about various buildups, I'm pretty sure I'd like to go to 48 or 72 volts. I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself, but it seems like when the batteries need replaced is the prime time to convert. Id like to not have to do EVERYTHING at once, for the sake of my bank account...

any opinons? I've learned a tremendous amount on this site, and I look forward to any input I can get :)