Dpi charger - 1 me - 0

[harleychief]

A STORY AND TROUBLESHOOTING PROCESS

This past weekend I decided to start doing some work on the cart, so I moved it to a better place in the shop. Sunday afternoon stopped working and thought I should plug the DPI Accusense charger (that I bought last year from Carts Unlimited ) in to it so the batteries would stay charged. So I grabbed the charger from the other end of the shop; plugged it into the wall outlet and then plugged it into the cart; to my surprise it didn't work. I looked over at the charger and saw 2 Red LEDs on; for the Power and Detection. The lights weren't blinking just on steady. I heard the charger humming so I did what any red blooded American man would do, I went over to the wall outlet and jiggled the plug. That didn't do anything the charger was still humming away, so I went over the cart plug and jiggled that, again no change. Now what do I do? The wall outlet was working, I even went so far as to put a volt meter on it 120 volt no problem. I unplugged everything and went to watch the football game. I came back at half time, plugged everything back in and had the same results. It was at this point that I broke every man-law I've ever know, I broke out the manual, to my surprise every check involved flashing LEDs. I decided to call DPI the next day.
Monday morning I called and asked for tech support and got right through to Rick. I gave him all the information on the charger and which lights were on. He sounded surprised because I was using a 36 volt charger and he said that DPI hasn't had many issues with that unit. He then said that the charger wasn't seeing the battery pack which could be caused by a few things. First it could be low voltage at the pack. I told him that over the weekend I installed a new SOC meter (also bought at Carts Unlimited ) and it was showing 37.7 volts; so that wasn't the problem. Rick then explained how to troubleshoot the system, here is the outline:

1. Unplug the charger from the wall
2. Remove the charger cover.
3. Take a volt meter and read the pack voltage (DC) to establish the baseline of the pack.
4. Look in the charger and find the Black and White wires that come out of the cord from the charger to the cart.
5. Put the volt meter on those 2 wires where they connect to the control board and read the voltage. It should read the same as the baseline pack voltage.
6. If the voltage reads the same the problem would be in the control board. If it doesn't read the same as the pack voltage the problem is further up the line and to keep checking the voltage coming from the pack. In my case I was not getting any reading at the control board; good news it's not the control board.
7. Check the voltage on the male end of the cart plug, it should read the pack voltage. Again in my case no voltage at the plug.
8. Check the voltage on the out side of the fuse that the white wire is connected to. So I put the tester on the fuse and the negative battery post, all good voltage checks out.

So now I know that the positive side is connected, oh wait let me check the black (negative) wire that is connected to the battery. Here is where I found my problem. The ground wire in the ring terminal had come loose, ah ha no ground. When I was installing the SOC meter I must have moved that wire enough to break the connection. I put a new ring terminal on, and checked the voltage back at the charger and eureka the black and white wires now had full pack voltage. Buttoned up the charger, plugged everything back in and the charger started going through it's normal start up. The charger was smarter than me; score: DPI - 1 me - 0

Thanks to Rick at DPI and his step-by-step troubleshooting I was able to get things back to normal in under 30 minutes. The support that DPI gave me was great and I called Rick back to let him know what I found. In my book both DPI and Rick are a class act.

[DIRTPIT HC]

That's funny because my man-Ual states to completely dismantle said apparatus before calling your idiot buddy over to acess your progress and only then are you suppose to glance at the first page of the manual. After 5 days of head scratching your permitted to make "The Call".

All kidding aside,I have an accusense and it is a quality machine and makes my carting life much easier. Glad you got it worked out.