In order to emphasize the importance of using good common sense when
troubleshooting a golf cart, I have cut and pasted some information from the
book I wrote “Electric Golf Cart Repair 101 (and a half)”, into this post.
Reading it might just save you some of the grief that I and many others have
experienced by not be as careful we should have.
Here is a piece of Chapter 7:
As always, the first step in troubleshooting any electric cart, whether it won’t run, runs intermittently or whatever, is to get the cart’s rear end jacked up to where the wheels are off the ground. Sometimes problems with carts come and go. If the problem goes away while we are holding the accelerator down to take readings, etc., the cart will take off if its wheels are on the ground. When I first started working on carts and thought I was smart enough to work on a cart without jacking it up, I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I had a cart drag me up the driveway one time and run into my boat trailer. Shortly after hitting the trailer, I managed to reach up and get a hold of the Forward/Reverse Switch (F/R Switch) and was able to get it out of Forward but the problem was that it went on through Neutral and into Reverse. We (the cart and me) then took off the other way until I finally got it back into Neutral (after hitting the side of the house). Thank goodness there were no neighbors watching.
In getting the cart ready to work on, I highly recommend getting BOTH of the back wheels off the ground.
Here is a piece of Chapter 5:
Once you’re sure that the batteries are not the problem, it is time to get the back wheels up so that, if you make a mistake, or if the cart “magically starts working”, it doesn’t take off on you. Many a mechanic has tried to short cut this part and leave the cart on the ground, and while troubleshooting the cart, all of a sudden whatever was wrong went right and off goes the cart. Never troubleshoot a non- running cart with the wheels still on the ground. I use a cheap motorcycle jack for this. I simply roll it under the back of the cart and, that way, I can get both wheels off the ground at the same time. You can obviously jack up one side, place a jack stand under it and then jack up the other side or however you want to do it, but get them both off the ground. Now, you might say, as many have, the rear end of the cart is a differential, so I’ll just jack up one side and the drive power, (should the cart start working), will be transferred to the raised wheel so it will spin but not the one still on the ground. Ideally, that is good logic, but in practice things can go wrong. Let’s say the brake linings are dragging on the raised wheel side. Then the differential tries to move energy to the other side. Don’t take the chance. Just do what it takes to get both rear wheels off the ground before you start testing by activating switches, moving the accelerator, etc.
As an example of what can go wrong with the wheels NOT off of the ground in include this from Chapter 15:
While we’re on the subject of “WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?”, let me tell you what can “REALLY” go wrong.
I had somebody drop off one of those old carts at my shop for repairs just a few weeks ago. The customer mentioned something about the cart trying to take off when put in Reverse, but I didn’t take the time to get a lot of details.
By now, anybody that has been reading this book knows how adamant I am about getting the back wheels off the ground before turning on the KS, putting the cart in Forward or Reverse, or moving the accelerator, so I pushed the cart over to my normal work area and went to get the jack. Apparently, in my effort to get the cart where I wanted it, I must have touched the F/R Switch slightly (not on purpose), and all of a sudden the cart took off in Reverse at FULL speed. I wasn’t expecting ”that” and neither was the maintenance man at the business next door as he watched me chasing the cart through his privacy fence into his property.
Thank goodness, as it went through the fence, it got high centered on some of the remnants of the fence and stopped with its wheels still spinning. I was, at that point, able to get to the F/R Switch and shut it down by moving it to the Neutral position.
HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN. Especially to me!! I’ve been working on these things for years. I thought I was aware of everything that could happen, but obviously I HAD ANOTHER LESSON TO LEARN.
For information about books written by Ron Staley about both electric and gas driven golf carts and their repair, visit the following links.
Electric Golf Cart Repair, both as an eBook and in Hardcopy:
Book: Ronald L Staley: 9780578560557: Amazon.com: Books
Gas Golf Cart Repair, both as an eBook and in Hardcopy:
Gas Golf Cart Repair Book: Ron Staley: 9798987911303: Amazon.com: Books