A lot of people in South Florida store their golf carts for the summer when they return to their winter homes. When they return the following season, they have a charger that apparently doesn’t work, even though it worked last season. A Golf Cart Charger will look for a specific battery voltage before they recognize the batteries and start to charge. Prime Golf Cars can service the problem with your golf cart charger.
If the batteries in your golf cart are discharged below that voltage point (basically, when the cart won’t move), it would appear you have a Golf Cart Charger problem, when in fact, you may have a battery problem. Even the new “smart” chargers won’t recognize a deeply discharged group of batteries. If your cart does not move, you have a possible problem, and need to be sure the issue is not a battery problem before concluding you have a charger problem.
You can use one of the older “dumb” chargers that don’t have LEDs or sophisticated electronics and attempt to get some voltage into the batteries. For example, if you have an older home garage 6 or 12 volt charger it can be used on 6 volt battery. You will have to do the whole string of batteries, about the same amount of time on each battery or pair of batteries. You would do two batteries at a time in the string with the 12 volt charger (positive of #1 to negative of #2 battery). You don’t have to break the string to do this. If you have 8 volt batteries, you can use a 6 volt charger, which won’t fully charge the battery, but this will get you enough voltage so your cart charger will recognize the batteries and start charging. You could use a 12 volt charger on 8 volts, but you CAN’T let the charger finish. You would have to monitor the battery voltage to be sure it didn’t go past 8 volts.
While we would love to sell you a new charger, we only want to do that if you really need a charger. If your cart charger still doesn’t work after rectifying the battery discharge problem, give us a call. Also, if your batteries ended up being discharged because your Golf Cart Charger doesn’t have a maintenance mode or float mode after charging, there several things you can do. When the cart is going to sit for a long length of time without being used, plug the charger in at least once a month and let it go through a charge cycle. Or, you can check out our golf cart maintainers. They “float” the golf cart batteries for extended periods of time.
Things to Do When a Golf Cart Charger is Not Working:
Identify your golf carts voltage:
The charger you buy needs to match the voltage of your golf cart (to avoid unnecessary damage to your batteries). 36-volt golf carts require a 36-volt charger. 48-volt golf carts require a 48-volt charger.
Identify the correct plug type for your cart:
Different brands and models of golf carts have different Plug “heads” on them. Because there are at least half-a-dozen plug types on the market for the various golf cart models. You will need to choose the golf cart charger with the plug that will fit your golf cart’s charging receptacle.
How to Determine Your Golf Cart Voltage:
Lift up your golf cart’s front seat and locate your golf cart batteries.
Inspect your batteries for the number of acid holes they have on each battery head cover. Each battery typically has 3, 4 or 6 holes on top.
Take the number of acid holes on one of your batteries and multiply that number by 2 to determine your golf cart battery voltage.
Multiply your golf cart battery voltage by the total number of golf cart batteries on your cart.