My dad was “in charge” of the golf carts. He was pretty good about checking the water levels, always asking mom to buy him distilled water. He had gotten to the point of asking me to put the water in - he had no balance & couldn’t see very well, spilled water everywhere & the last straw was he overfilled at least one battery that leaked on the garage floor & ruined the finish in that spot. I put on my headlamp & have a squeeze bottle with a tip (for condiments) that I use to make sure the water gets where it’s supposed to go & at the proper level.
Dad passed away in January so now the carts are “on me”. I never used one (he and mom were in their carts all the time, dad because he couldn’t walk outside any more), but now I have been using his ‘workshop on wheels’ since he’s gone. I never paid much attention to the corrosion, but it’s started to be a problem & that’s why I ordered new battery wires. I will be re-wiring 3 golf carts .... whew. Some of the wires/terminals just need cleaning up, but it’s nice to have new wires, too. The corrosion/wires are a ‘winter’ project - days when I cannot work outside. Dad’s cart is kept in the garage, mom’s is under a pole barn, but can be pulled in the garage so I can work on it out of the weather.
The one I replaced yesterday went well - got the wires off the terminals, cleaned them all up, put on some old stuff dad had to block corrosion (I need to get something else) & got the wires hooked back up. The cart is charging/running. This particular one (dad’s) has weak batteries - it was in the shop 2 or 3 summers ago & they told us at that time the batteries weren’t great. The bad thing is if you replace one, you need to replace all & that’s an extremely expensive proposition. We’ll be running these batteries until the cart just won’t charge/run any more. The 3rd cart is at our lake cabin - I might be able to get one of my brothers to work on that one.
Thanks for the info :-)
Yep, @ $125-150 each, they add up.
They weight nearly 80 lbs each too so when you do end up changing them, find some strong young man to swap them.
They also have a core charge so you’ll want to bring the old ones in with you when you get new ones. Let the golf cart supplier pull the old ones out and put the new ones in your vehicle, which pretty much needs to be a pickup truck or good sized SUV. Six batteries will be close to 500 lbs and 8 batteries about 650 lbs.
If you do it while the cart will still drive, you could drive it up on a trailer, take it to the GC battery supplier and they will change them right on the trailer or drive it off, swap them and drive it back on. Then you go home and drive it off the trailer.