'94 Marathon upgrade...controller problems

[meathawler61]

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster. Love the site

I've recently acquired a '94 marathon hunting buggy from a good friend and I am currently trying to perform all the basic upgrades that I've read about here to give this ol horse some new legs. The cart has a 4" jakes lift and currently has stock 18x8.5-8 tires, soon to be upgraded as well hopefully. Today we replaced the stock F&R with an HD F&R switch, as well as an HD solenoid. I've got new AWG4 wiring to replace throughout, just haven't gotten that far into it yet. The batteries are old, but still holding a good charge. Obviously will need to be replaced soon, but want to get all I can out of these first.

The previous owner has recently installed a D&D 4845 controller, which I assumed was stout enough to handle the load, but after installing the switch and solenoid, I think I fried the controller. Smoke, stink, it was bad. I retraced all our wiring in relation to the diagrams and everything looks good.

Did I just fry the controller? That's pretty obvious at this point IMO, but why? That's my biggest concern now I guess. Before I drop several hundred bucks on a new controller, I don't want to put a new one in and the same thing happen

Please help and thanks in advance!

[meathawler61]

Looking at troubleshooting from Alltrax today I've figured out that the red led blinks 7 times at startup, saying the V is > the sliding limit. Did I just mix some wires up when reinstalling everything or what other reasons would I be throwing this code?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[txbizman]

Im new here as well learning all can to build an electric hunting buggy so i dont have any personal experience with electric carts but i do have lots of experience with electronics and in that experience usually when you " let the smoke out" its done.....

Hoping someone will chime in to help.....

[meathawler61]

I've about figured that to be a certainty at this point, I'm just wanting to know why or how I fried it, so as to not do the same with a new controller when I replace it. With our current setup I don't see how I could have sent too much juice to the controller. We're running 36v with 4AWG wiring, HD F&R, and HD Solenoid. Unless we completely goofed the installation of the HD components, I'm just stumped as to why she went up in smoke? The controller is less than 2 years old I know for sure.

[scottyb]

If the cart was running before your install, and the controller went up in smoke on the first test, then I would say that you have something installed incorrectly resulting in a direct short. Re check your wiring against the Alltrax install diagram for your cart.

Consider something larger than the 4844 for replacement. This 400 amp control is not much bigger then the 350 amp original.

[meathawler61]

Thanks Scotty, I was hoping you or Johnny might have thoughts to share. We double checked all our wiring, but we could have easily made a mistake. We'll have to make sure it's right.

So with my 4845 shot, what would you recommend I go with given the other components I have? I've already thought about upping to 48v, and it's still a possibility in the future, but not anytime soon. I'm new to the electric motor world. I've read all that I can the last few weeks, but am certainly a novice in this field. I'm also on a very tight budget right now and must be as frugal as possible.

Thanks Scotty