This presentation is rather long but understanding batteries and proper charging techniques are extremely important to the longevity of your battery pack and the dollars in your wallet. Read on to discover typical failures of golf cart battery chargers and other good stuff. Do not assume that you need to buy a new charger just because your golf cart battery charger does not work.
Golf cart battery chargers for electric golf cars fall into two basic types; Automatic (newer) and Not-Automatic (older). Most of these basic charger types have an ammeter on the front to show the number of amperes being provided to the battery pack. Otherwise they are very different. Any 36-volt battery charger should initially start by providing at least 15+ amps to the batteries. The amps may drop down very quickly if the batteries are fully charged but the ammeter should show at least 15 amps to start off. If you know that the batteries need charging and the ammeter will NOT go above 15 amps, then you probably have a faulty charger and it must be repaired.
The older non-automatic golf cart battery chargers usually have an ON/OFF/TIMER knob that switches the charger ON or OFF and allows you to set the number of hours the charger will stay on, usually a maximum of 12 hours.
Almost all older golf cart battery chargers provide 36 volts although there are some early 24 volt and 48 volt systems as well. Most of these early chargers will turn on and try to charge any 36-volt battery pack into which they are plugged…they don’t care what the existing battery voltage happens to be. Newer ‘automatic’ chargers employ a solid state circuit board that MUST detect a certain amount of voltage from the battery pack to even turn on in the first place. If the battery pack voltage is too low the charger WILL NOT come on! This usually leads one to think the charger is bad. NOT SO! Read on.
Lester makes chargers for Club Car (36- and 48-volt), Yamaha (36- and 48-volt), E-Z-GO (36- and 48-volt chargers) for golf, industrial and commercial products as well as many other battery powered electric vehicles. There are lots of different Lester chargers out there and they are excellent products.
E–Z-GO has made their own 36-volt golf cart battery chargers for many years. The early ones were non-automatic but in the mid 80’s they introduced the ‘Total Charge’ charger. It has a white case with a large green label that covers the front panel. It also has a timer decal and knob in the upper left to turn it on & off and to record the elapsed time of charge the batteries required. Later (’88 to ’97) they produced a ‘Total Charger II’, which features push button start, a ‘charge complete’ light and an LED readout of various voltage functions and length of charge in minutes. Still later came the ‘Total Charger III’ that did away with the external timer unit. It comes on when plugged in to a golf car with sufficient battery voltage. In 1995 E-Z-GO brought out their 36-volt ‘PowerWise’ charger for their Medalist and subsequent TXT models.
The 48- & 72-volt chargers used by Bombardier, Trans II and Global Electric MotorCar (GEM) are ‘oddball’ chargers for which parts can be difficult or impossible to get. Call us at 1-800-328-1953 for more information about these chargers.
