Turn on a powerdrive charger without a club car?

[onetwothreetim]

Hello, I'm working on a powerdrive 3 charger for my father-in-law and don't have access to his club car. I'm starting to doubt that there's any problem with the charger because the fuse, breaker and bridge rectifier all seem ok. Nothing burnt or discolored either. Is there an easy way to make the charger turn on by jumping any of the pins on the charger plug end? I've found a lot of information about bypassing the obc on the clubcar itself, but I only want to turn on the charger without batteries or the clubcar. I'd prefer not to bypass the control relay inside the charger but I will I have to. Just looking for the easy way out.

The charger plug is the round type with three pins. I'm assuming one pin must be a sense and just realized that it probably needs a battery voltage to turn it on.

I must be searching using the wrong keywords because I'm sure that someone must have asked this question on this forum before.

Thanks in advance for any replies I really appreciate any help.
Regards,
Tim

[sthreatt]

The only way I know of to turn on a PowerDrive charger without a Club Car cart is to jumper the relay inside. I do that sometimes to check other components of the charger, or to bring up batteries that are too low to activate the charger. While it's jumpered you will be able to read output voltage at the two longer pins in the handle plug.

[Fairtax4me]

You can power the transformer by jumping the two black wires on the relay together.
But for an actual test you do need a battery pack to be able to test the output.
Probably the most common failure on the PD3 is the rectifier. There was an update for those to a higher amp version. This usually causes the charger to turn on for a few seconds then pop the breaker.

The relay is a somewhat common failure in those, if you have a 36v+ power supply handy you can apply power to the relay and see if it clicks on and gives power to the transformer. You can do this from the charge cord, but you run the risk of blowing up your power supply if the charger does turn on, because open circuit voltage at the pins can be over 70V. Powering the relay directly is the safer way, even though you have to open the case.

The PD3 chargers are robust and don't often have major failures, I would be more inclined to think that if it "doesn't work", there is an issue with the cart.

[onetwothreetim]

Thank you sthreatt and FairTax4me.

I really appreciate your help. I'll check the relay today. I'm starting to think that the problem is in the cart too because he had a shorted wire somewhere that melted and he had a cart repair shop fix it. Strange though that they wouldn't have checked to make certain that the charging circuit worked.

Thanks again. You're awesome.

Tim

[onetwothreetim]

Originally Posted by sthreatt

The only way I know of to turn on a PowerDrive charger without a Club Car cart is to jumper the relay inside. I do that sometimes to check other components of the charger, or to bring up batteries that are too low to activate the charger. While it's jumpered you will be able to read output voltage at the two longer pins in the handle plug.

So I took all of your advice and ended up using a jumper to bypass the relay and the charger worked. I then decided that I would be wondering if the relay circuit was working so I dug out a power supply and verified that the circuit was working by applying 48 volts to the relay circuit. It was.

I took the charger up to my Father in law and plugged it in and (of course) the charger didn't work.

My father in law brought out a copy of the invoice for the repairs and one of the many comments on the bill was "Batteries need to be brought up ,charger may not work."

Even though I don't remember thinking at the time about your low voltage comment (because I was thinking only about getting the relay to turn on) it must have registered because I got to thinking on the way home that maybe the battery voltage was too low and the obc wasn't allowing the charger to energize.

The battery bank is sitting at 48.0v which is apparently less than half a charge and must be below the level that the obc will allow the charger to run, I plan to bypass the relay and get the charge up.

I have no idea why a repair shop would let the cart go home without charging the batteries fully. Maybe my father in law misunderstood something and told them that they didn't need to do it. I don't know.

Does anyone know the actual voltage point where the obc will say that the charge is too low? Better still, why does the obc not charge below a certain voltage?

My father in law really seems to want a new charger so it might hard to to get him on board with charging the batteries with a bypassed charger. I wanted to try the bypass while I was there just to verify that I hadn't lost my mind and my FIL said the didn't want to use a "souped up charger" :)


Thank you both again. I really appreciate it.
Have a good day.
Tim

[onetwothreetim]

I just wondering,,,,can I damage the obc by bypassing the charger relay by joining the two black wires and leaving everything else on the cart (and charger) hooked up normally? Seems like it shouldn't hurt, but I just want to be certain. I'm planning on only bypassing the relay to allow the charger to run for about 1/2 hour and then hooking everything back up normally, Thanks.

[sthreatt]

Originally Posted by onetwothreetim

I just wondering,,,,can I damage the obc by bypassing the charger relay by joining the two black wires and leaving everything else on the cart (and charger) hooked up normally? Seems like it shouldn't hurt, but I just want to be certain. I'm planning on only bypassing the relay to allow the charger to run for about 1/2 hour and then hooking everything back up normally, Thanks.

What you describe i have done many times with no ill effect. I leave it charging with the bypass until the voltage is high enough to activate normally, then remove the jumper and let it complete its cycle. I check it occasionally while on the bypass with volt ohm meter and when I see enough, unplug, remove jumper, and re-plug. As far as how much voltage that takes, I don't have an exact number, but copied this from another website. " Automatic golf cart battery chargers are not able to charge batteries that are completely discharged or dead. They require a minimal number of volts to begin charging. At least 20-25 volts across the set will be required for a 36 volt golf cart. At least 30-35 volts across the set will be required for a 48 volt golf cart. "

[kgsc]

If the pack is sitting at 48 volts as stated then the problem is the obc or the activation circuit for the charger. Make sure to check the fuse in the yellow fuse holder behind the charger port.

[onetwothreetim]

Just letting everyone know that I really appreciate all of the great advice.

The charging problem has been resolved. It turns out that the repair shop didn't hook up the main power wire that goes to the female charger plug on the club car. (The red one that goes to the positive terminal on the last battery.)

My father in law said that the plug is getting very hot and that the charger didn't shut off when he expected but I think that the batteries were so low that it's going to take longer to get them up to where they used to be charged. I'm not sure about the hot plug....

Thanks again! Every bit of advice was appreciated. I feel like I should reply to each comment but I'm so swamped with work that I hardly have time to sleep right now. Please consider this your personal thank you. I really appreciate all of you taking your time to help me out.

Tim

[sgarcia]

A lot of good info on this thread. Would anyone have a picture of the 2 black black wires and how you jumped them together?