On Aug 19, 12:33*am, mm wrote:
So, where were we?
Even though the manager said I could throw away the chargers, I would
never get rid of parts for anything until the original problem is
resolved.
Today I got a call from the other manager that they got the new
charger and it didn't work, and there may have been a bad wire in the
golf cart and I should bring back the chargers.
In my defense, I tend to believe what people say and they said the
charger was bad (well, maybe that's not a defense), plus it was 90 or
95+ degrees out and humid when I was there, and crowded in their
little golf cart garage, and in general I'm running on only 5
cylinders anyhow. *
Also the charger they had is supposed to signal when there are battery
problems, but I didn't know about that before I took the charger home,
and at home I never took the current charger out of my trunk, only the
one that broke 10 years ago that does nothing. *I don't remember if
the flashing lights earlier matched "Battery Problem" or not.
Details
They had received the new charger by UPS and the ammeter never moved.
The owner called the vendor and was told to look under the seat, where
the batteries are, and she or her manager or her manager's buddy who
hangs around sometimes noticed a wire from one battery to the other
had come out of the crimp connector. *So he put it back in the
connector and crimped it some more.
Then they used the new charger which she checked every hour and it was
always off, and she'd have to unplug the golf cart and plug it back in
to get it started again. *When she said this it sounded really bad,
and I'm very impressionable so I thought it was bad, but even while I
was there I started to have doubts and now I realize that I don't know
how early in the day the golf cart failed, two weeks ago. *It might
have been early so the batteries were mostly charged, and those few
minutes early today were enough. * In fact it occurs to me now that
she said things which indicate that it rarely takes more than 30
minutes to charge at the end of the day, so the new charger is good,
but it's a cheap model (see question in previous or next post) and she
says she has 30 days to return it, for any reason I guess.
So we reconnected the charger they were using until 2 weeks ago and it
seems to work fine. *Unlike the el cheapo, it shows how many minutes
it takes before before it turns itself off, unles the time is under 31
minutes. *In that case it just shows 30. *We left the garage for a
while and when we came back it was off and said 30, but the time was
probably less.
The golf cart has 6 6-volt batteries, big like the size for a car. *I
showed her where there was battery "salt" on the batteries in two
places and told her how to clean it. *She already knew about water
level, but I don't know if they use distilled or not. *
Also, *catalog said that if you have 24 battery caps, you have 48
volts worth of batteries, but the drawing showed six 4-cell batteries.
It turns out they do they make 8-volt rechargeable batteries the size
of car batteries. *But the drawing confused her anyhow and she thought
she had 48 volts. *It was hard to count the battery caps because they
came with a device that loosened all three of them at once, and made
it hard to see the actualy caps. * Apparently golf cart batteries are
also used in some electric cars still.http://www.electric-cars-are-for-gir...t-battery.html
Her father owned and ran this business until about a year ago, and
died, and now she's learning to run it.
Anyhow, they have the chargers now and other than giving her a little
more advice, I'm out of it. *Fine. *
Thanks for all your help you guys.
Seems like none of you know what the f you are doing, start by going
to
www.batteryuniversity.com, try googling Battery maintenance, get a
quality V meter and quality Prism gravity hydrometer. You are ruining
batteries if you dont take care of them, you are not taking care of
them by guessing and relying on a charger.