wire hot

[cadmobile500]

[QUOTE]
you are going below the 50% power on your batteries
it will eventually kill them/QUOTE]
so, if the voltage drops below 50% under load it will harm the batteries?

yes

[cadmobile500]

i thought that applied to when not under a load?

[Gregorio]

Industry standard for home power battery discharge readings are based on open circuit readings. This means when the battery isn’t under load and hasn’t been under load for a few hours. Gold carts should be no different.

[cadmobile500]

I charged the cart yesterday, toped off the batteries with distilled water and charged them again and woke up with 50.9v on the pack.
three of the batteries are not reaching 8.49v. the other three are over 8.5v after charging.
I just took it for a 5-10 minute beat run and climbed 4 big hills and came back to check the voltage. I got 49.3 which is about 65%.
does this mean its time for new batteries?

[ThreeCW]

I think you need to evaluate a little more before considering a battery change out.
When measuring your battery voltage for the State of Charge (SOC) chart, you are looking for the stabilized, static voltage of the battery pack when it is NOT under load. From my personal observations, after running my cart, that may take a number of hours (minimum of 2 hrs or even up to 6 hours depending on the SOC and how hard I drew the batteries down) for the voltage to stabilize.

cadmobile500, you asked: “I have noticed that the wire from the battery to the solenoid is getting warm. Is this normal?”

My personal experience is that when running my cart HARD, I observed that my Motor heats up (too hot to comfortably keep my hand on for long), my Controller gets warm (not uncomfortable to hold my hand on), my Solenoid and Fwd/Rev Contactor warm up a little bit above ambient temperature but my 2 AWG battery cables do NOT noticeably increase in temperature.
You mention the cable from the “battery to the solenoid is getting warm”? How about the other cables between the batteries and to and from the motor? Any increase in temperature?
A small increase in temperature may be normal or could be a sign that the cable is undersized or the cable has developed additional resistance resulting in heat buildup. Using your ohm meter, you can individually check the resistance of each high amperage cable to determine if you have some additional resistance built up.
Did you determine cause of the melted down terminal?
Does the warm cable happen to be on the terminal that you melted down? If so, it may be time to change out that cable.

Regards, 3CW