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Steve IA
04-18-2007 15:21:23
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My DW bought herself an old POS golf cart to putt-putt around the place. Now she expects me to maintain it for her. !!! Here’s the story. It has an 8HP Kohler engine w/ centrifugal clutch. 12 V. It was starting and running fine. After several days of using it, she went to start it and the battery quickly drained and all she got was the dreaded click-click of too little juice to engage the starter motor. I looked at it and decided to fix any bright, tight and shiny issues. There were some questionable connections which I cleaned and retightened. I charged the battery with the charger and hooked everything up again. It started just fine a couple of times. Next day, just like the day before… battery drained nearly dead. Ok, says I, bad battery. I stuck my boat battery in the beast and it worked fine for 2 days, then the same thing as the 1st battery. In the mean time, I had recharged the 1st battery and expected it to drain itself , but after 2 days of sitting I still got 12.2 V when tested, just what it was when I started the test. Here’s my thinking now. 1st battery is good, but there is something slowly draining the battery(s) overnight.  I inspected the elec. system and found that the engine was charging about 7 VDC at idle and 14+VDC at higher rpms. I’ve pulled what I assume is the VR. It’s the gray finned boxy object on the right of the picture. It is a Repco brand with no model # that I can find. The 3 prongs are marked from left to right: AC B+ AC. The 2 AC prongs are connected by wires to the flywheel area of the engine. The B+ prong ins connected to the + side of the starter solenoid. The solenoid is a round 4 post model. 1 large post >ground to engine. 2nd large post > + side of battery ,key switch, and VR as stated above. 1 small post > key switch. Key Switch= 3 position off/on/start. Wires to Large VR post, small VR post and through ballast resistor to coil.
There was a switch and wires for a headlight, that had broken wires near the light. It appeared that the wires had shorted at some time in history, but not recently. I removed the headlight wires from the elec system.
Now I’m recharging the 1st battery. I will test the voltage after charging, then again tomorrow before trying to start it. Do any of you have suggestions about further tests to run to isolate the drain if I haven’t fixed it with what I’ve done so far? Since writing this I found out the VR is really a rectifier. I was told I should be getting ~36VAC when measuring the 2 AC terminals, and ~ 14.7 VDC out of the B+ terminal. I'm only getting 12 on the AC terminals and ~ 7VDC out. Looks like maybe I need to remove the cover and look at the alternator. Any advice, comments are appreciated Thanks in advance. Steve
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