Watch out for this - New forward/reverse switch is bad!

[crittercreek]

I replaced a cooked F/R switch in a 2002 EZGO non-PDS cart and nothing worked. I previously had forward only. Thinking I had caused the problem myself during replacemant by transposing wires, I went over everything and metered individual leads to make sure I had them all down properly. After exhaustive troubleshooting using a lot of info from this site, I discovered that the new switch I had installed had a manufacturing defect, such that when it was operated the fixed and moveable contacts would not line up with each other and thus no juice would get to the motor.

To fix the problem, I had to simply loosen the moveable contact studs and rotate them 90 degrees so that they would line up when the switch was operated. I'm sure that if they made one switch this way, there are probably others out there sitting on a shelf somewhere.

Beware.

[scottyb]

Thanks for the 'heads-up' Critter. One more reason to stay away from ezslo

[roady89]

Who did you get the switch from?

[crittercreek]

I got the switch from a dealer in Sebewaing, Michigan. But he picked it up from the distributer in Pontiac, I think.

It was a simple thing to fix. Once I seen the problem, it was obvious that the two contacts were not lining up properly. The springs that are intended to make sure there is good contact between the upper and lower contacts could not bring them together because, being misaligned, the moveable contact was riding crosswise on the insulating mounting board, thus leaving an open circuit, where the two contacts could not quite touch.

What made this a tough problem was that I didn't suspect the new switch would be bad, so I figured either I did something wrong or that coincidentally something else went bad beside the obviously bad F/R switch. I wasted a lot of time on this and hopefully this will save someone else from running in to the same problem.