Battery life and Warranty

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by cgtech

BUT I have seen many, many batteries that were killed by a fill system whose float stuck in the full position starving the cell of water & destroying the battery, while leaving the user to believe everything was fine because the float indicator was up. That doesn't even cover the many leaks, plus the risks involved in linking the vented gasses between all cells in the event of a shorted battery.

That is exactly what I have been saying here since 2009.

Since then I have maintained four golf course fleets that have auto-fill systems, one fleet of Club Cars and three fleets of EZGO RXV's.

Prior to 2009, I maintained a fleet of Club Car Precedents that did not have autofills.

In 2009, I took over a fleet of 2008 (first-off-the-assemble-line) RXVs, and the first auto-fills I had worked with, so that was new to me and I had no one else familiar with them. But I had a "sense" that something was wrong, and about a month after I took over the fleet, I pulled the auto-fills and looked at every cell. 14 batteries were completely dry and had to be replaced. That was after about 3 months of use.

Not long after that, the dealer determined that the valve stems were too long, so the valves were closing too soon, leaving the cells too low, or dry. So, his tech put valves with shorter stems in every auto-fill. After that, valves were not closing, and overfilling, blocking venting and forcing the good stuff out of the cells.

Within a year, the 2008 fleet was almost useless, which I documented in the other thread.

We got the 2012's in 2011, a year earlier than the lease called for. Similar auto-fill problems, and the (now factory) tech started replacing valves that failed to close, which I noted on each battery service. That ended when the skin on his hands and the sink in our cartbarn had serious acid damage. We had major battery failures again.

Best as I can recall, the battery warranty was four years or 24,000 AH, whichever came first (I'll go find that), and 50% of the batteries in both the 2008 and 2012 fleets were replaced under warranty.

We got our current fleet last year and some valves fail to close on it, too. I have serviced batteries with 100% distilled water, so it is not "hard water" making the valves not work. Time will tell on battery life, but we are at 8000 AH, m/l, and have not replaced one yet.

Truthfully, where I'm at I'm the only one who cares. Those in charge and those who service the carts in Winter when I'm not there don't.

As for the Club Cars with autofills, that was when I was hired to retrain the outside staff at a major Florida course in Snowbird season. I took over maintenance on 67 carts, with no history provided other than a service log with just dates. No one had noted auto-fill valve failures. I had the personal experience of knowing that you have to pay attention to auto-fill valves working properly, and some were not. I informed the GM, and the local dealer, and they both thought I was out of line. I persisted and after three months of emails, the dealer picked up a couple of carts I set aside for them, and took them in to check out the auto-fills.

I believe their answer was something like, "Oh! We see now."

Sorry, lots of words, but I hope they help someone.

[cartboy]

I have the RXV Manual saved on my hard drive, and when I went to look at warranty information, I found this prominently positioned on one of the first pages:

Overfilling batteries may void the warranty.

Then, the auto-fill that comes with the carts does exactly that on some of cells!!!

Here's the RXV battery warranty:

DEEP CYCLE BATTERY – RXV ELECTRIC MODELS:
Earlier of 4 years or 25,000 amp hours*

As I explained in my other thread, when we began to have massive battery failure in our 2012s, in an attempt to save our course a whole bunch of money, I checked the AH on all of the carts. Then I segregated them, put different colored stickers on the uprights, and designated rows in the cart barn, so that carts that were close to being out of battery warranty were the last to be used.

Yes, that was somewhat inconvenient, and even though I am the Supervisor, one of our staff took it upon himself to remove all those stickers and tell everyone to park and use carts however they wanted.

He is also the one who services batteries when I'm not there, and he does that however he wants, too.

So, that's what I'm up against.

Our E Z Go tech told me that if I leave, they're screwed.

Yeah, and no one will care.

[jjance]

The golf car manufacturer probably doesn't care. They will put the lose back on the battery manufacturer. Which will increase cost for the individual. Lord know you don't want to piss the golf course off and lose a customer. You are worrying about things you don't need to.

[G-Daddy]

I bought new Trojan 105s in April 2015. One went bad and I took it back to Battery Warehouse in October. They just gave me a new one in exchange. Two year warranty.

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by jjance

The golf car manufacturer probably doesn't care. They will put the lose back on the battery manufacturer. Which will increase cost for the individual. Lord know you don't want to piss the golf course off and lose a customer. You are worrying about things you don't need to.

Worry is not the issue.

I came here originally to find someone with similar problems, to find help for problems I had never encountered. That was 6 or 7 years ago, and my mission changed to one of informing, to help others with similar problems.

But, yes, every battery that has gone bad has gone bad during the warranty period, and every battery has been replaced without cost to the golf course.

There was a switch in battery manufacturer for the 2012 model, and there was a little finger-pointing/blaming by their rep, but that did not last long. It likely helped that at that time the course was managed by a major international management company.

The 2008 and 2012 fleets were replaced prior to the end of the lease contract, also, so that saved some battery-replacement costs. As I mentioned way back yonder somewhere, I segregated the 2012's to avoid going over the battery warranty period on some of those bad batteries.

The other day I stumbled onto the "Bad Autofill Valve" list I saved on my hard drive, and an accumulation over time had almost every cart with at least one valve failure one time or another.

But, again, yes, you're right, no one's going to do anything about them, either. It is not a perfect system and failures are expected and accepted for the sake of convenience.

&, over the years, being forced to deal with these problems, it appears we have found ways to resolve them, or at least reduce them.

[cgtech]

" It is not a perfect system and failures are expected and accepted for the sake of convenience."

Haha! Try & sell that to a private customer! I wish the fill system display in the showroom said that on it.

[FF Titus]

Originally Posted by G-Daddy

I bought new Trojan 105s in April 2015. One went bad and I took it back to Battery Warehouse in October. They just gave me a new one in exchange. Two year warranty.

Should have been 18 months. That's what we're told from Trojan here in the northeast. T105s, T875s and T1275s have 18 months warranty.

US1800 we had more battery warranty returns last year than any other battery manufacture that we stock. I ended up dropped US and bringing in Crown and the CR205 line. Crown has a 1 year warranty, and clients don't seem to mind the two battery post option opposed to the one post like the T105.

In my fleets, the T8V Trojan battery has been the worst for winter failures. 4 years max I've seen them survive the cold winters up here.

[cgtech]

18 months for Trojan here too.

[cartboy]

The

DEEP CYCLE BATTERY – RXV ELECTRIC MODELS:
Earlier of 4 years or 25,000 amp hours*

Is for both Trojans and US Battery. The 2012s came with US Battery; the 2008s and 2015s had/have Trojans.


http://www.ezgo.com/Portals/2/EZGO/P..._623505G15.pdf

[jjance]

4 years or 25,000 amp hours

That might sound like a lot until you do the math. 25,000 AH is equal to 1250 KwH. So if you use them for 2 KwH's / day you may get 3.5 years of warranty. And 2 KwH will get you about 8 miles of travel. Note: Math is not exact but close enough.