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Here's what I am talking
about:
If you have a non-sealed battery, it is highly
recommended that you use a good quality temperature compensating hydrometer,
like an E-Z Red SP101, which
can be purchased at an auto parts or battery store for less than $10. A
hydrometer is a float-type device used to determine the State-of-Charge (SoC) by
measuring the Specific Gravity of the electrolyte in each cell. It is an
accurate way of determining a battery's SoC and weak or dead cells. For
addition information on hydrometers, please read How Do I Use A
Hydrometer?.
Anybody that owns an electric golf cart should have
one.....Unless you have sealed batteries...df
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 8:03
PM
Subject: Re: ShopTalk: 99 Club Car,
batteries dying??????????????
Assuming we are talking about the batteries in a golf cart take
a look at this web site and see if it helps:
http://uuhome.de/william.darden/dcfaq3.htm
which I
found with Google with a search on 'lead acid battery'. You say
'batteries' so I'm guessing you have four 12-volt lead acid batteries in
series (positive connected to negative, etc.). If that's true the
cleanliness of the connections is very important. Start by cleaning all
of the terminals and connectors and make sure they are all tight. If
your fully charged voltage is still 48.5 you likely have one or more batteries
that are degraded. When the batteries are fully charged and you have the
batteries disconnected to clean the terminals measure the voltage of each
battery individually. If you have a digital voltmeter you can probably
trust the reading you get, but if it's analog it may have greater error than
the charged to discharged voltage range of a 12-V lead acid battery. You
can still measure the voltage across the individual batteries and look to see
if there are significant differences between them. As Mr. Darden
suggests a fully charged healthy battery should show about 12.65-Volts across
the terminals (that's 50.6-Volts for your four batteries in series with good
connections). Less, and your meter is inaccurate or the battery is
partially discharged or it and/or the connections have problems.
Also,
look to see what the service life on the batteries is. If these are
original equipment they may only be 48-month batteries (manufacturers are
cheap).
I hope this helps,
Alan Brooks
At
03:50 PM 10/23/2003 -0700, you wrote:
Hi
Group:
My warning lite (low battery) comes
on half way thru the round. These batteries are only four years
old. The output volts are about 48.5, fully
charged.
Any suggestions re
desulphizing etc????????????
Thanks I enjoy the posts in the group
Joe
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