State of Charge % incorrect

[Itchy75]

New to forums, so hello, hi, how are ya!

So, I took delivery of my 2021 I40L on 6/22/21 which has the 6 T-875 Trojan batts.

As it stands now, 9 out of 10 times, I have to perform the reset on the SOC% after achieving a full charge. I know it doesn't hinder the performance of the cart, but it is becoming quite annoying to have to do just about every time I charge it up and go to use it.

I've read through this thread and was wondering if they are still sending out new clusters. Did you get your success by emailing javier at icon or by going through Icon's website?

Thanks

[BobInDaytona]

Do you have this software, or is that a screenshot from the video?

[kdwalter]

I just received a new ICON I40L and breaking in the batteries. Once thing I noticed is if I go drive it around and drain the battery say 10%, then stop somewhere and turn if off, go inside for say 15 minutes, then come back out for more driving the battery indicator as reset to 100%. Anyone else see this or have suggestions?

[HDaugus]

Originally Posted by kdwalter

I just received a new ICON I40L and breaking in the batteries. Once thing I noticed is if I go drive it around and drain the battery say 10%, then stop somewhere and turn if off, go inside for say 15 minutes, then come back out for more driving the battery indicator as reset to 100%. Anyone else see this or have suggestions?

Yes I have this problem too. I'll drive 9 or 10 miles. Come back to the cart to go back out again and the SOC meter reads 100% which cannot be. Sometimes it will read 100% while still showing red on the lighted indicator near the charging port when plugged in to charge. If I go strictly by the charging port light, the batteries appear to be charging in the right amount of time relative to the how much the batteries need to be charged, not too fast, not too slow so I don't think it's a battery issue. I've only had the cart a month or so. Therefore I feel I can only trust the charging port light to let me know when the cart is fully charged. I charge up everyday after I drive the cart and I know about how many miles I can go on a charge, so I handle it that way, but it would be swell if I could rely on the SOC meter on the dash.

[HDaugus]

Originally Posted by CartsRFun

Just occurred to me...might not be a bad idea to have these
installed on the carts...measuring voltage straight off the
battery pack and not via obc...

My dealer installed one on the dash ...the read out difference is
that the ICON dash volt meter reads .7-.8 volts higher....

So my reference is the voltmeter from ScottyB's

https://www.cartsunlimited.net/battery-meters.html

Hopefully this might could help to acquire a more accurate reading..

Best wishes

Sorry to be such a girl, but how would you use the volt meter to judge your state of charge? What should be the reading at fully charged and what would be the voltage that you wouldn't want to go below so as not to damage your batteries? Thank you!

[ATrain]

Originally Posted by HDaugus

Sorry to be such a girl, but how would you use the volt meter to judge your state of charge? What should be the reading at fully charged and what would be the voltage that you wouldn't want to go below so as not to damage your batteries? Thank you!

You can measure the resting voltage easily by switching the multimeter to DC and touching the red/black posts of each battery and adding them up OR, even easier, just touch the last red and last black in the series.

One thing to note is there is a difference between checking an individual battery and the entire pack. Think of your remote controller if you mix and match new/old batteries. You can measure the total voltage or the voltage of each battery. Total voltage may be good, but you may see one battery is new and the other is old. The new battery would have an above average strain on it because it's compensating for the old. Likewise, if you have a battery with a bad cell, it's lower voltage could be dragging the entire pack down and causing early degradation to your pack.

That measurement is only so useful, for a few reasons. What you really need is the state of charge under load, which means while you're driving the cart.

For me, I used alligator clips to hook the wires to my multi and then just had the wires sticking out the side of the seat while I drove around and tested things.

That'll give you some measurements, but what good are those if there's no reference? So you'll want to find the data sheets for your specific batteries. Here's a data sheet for a 6v Trojan T-105, which are commonly in these carts.

So if you happened to have 8, 6v Trojans...according to the datasheet, the float charge of a 48v pack is 54v (or 6.75v per battery). The float charge is what the cart should read when fully charged. Sometimes there's a physics effect that happens with lead acid batteries where immediately after charging, there are electrons on the surface of the plates. Think of it like the foam on top of a beer...it's "beer" but there's not really much there of substance. So after your cart is "fully charged", just drive it like 5 feet to clear that before taking a reading. That's just your fully charged reading.

Now for "State of Charge". If you look at the SOC section, you'll see the different individual 6v battery readings. So if you wanted to see how accurate a charge of 80% is, you would want to measure each battery and confirm it's close to 6.25v AND the entire pack should be 50v (8 * 6.25v).

These are just some ways to get some tangible insight to your batteries. For me, on a non-ICON cart, it seemed kind of waste until I measured one battery and noticed it was a magnitude off of the rest and was the reason the cart would shut off and had terrible range. It was a eureka moment.

Again, these measurements are most accurate under load. You can also buy a [URL="https://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-BT-100-Battery-Load-Tester/dp/B000AMBOI0/[/URL], but you just need to make sure you take care of the volts each tester can handle.

[CartsRFun]

Hey HdGauss...

Here is a pix of the ScottyB battery pack voltmeter mounted on my
I40..

https://buggiesgonewild.com/attachme...2&d=1616702377

Volt reading from ScottyB's volt meter with 48volt agms full charge
is about 53.3 volts varies 53.2-53.4volts....

I totally disregard the factory dash readout. It often reads .7-.8 volt
higher.

Also keep a daily log of volts amps from my Eagle Pro Delta View
phone app...

Best wishes in your cart journey..

Happy Cartin'

[HDaugus]

Originally Posted by CartsRFun

Hey HdGauss...

Here is a pix of the ScottyB battery pack voltmeter mounted on my
I40..

https://buggiesgonewild.com/attachme...2&d=1616702377

Volt reading from ScottyB's volt meter with 48volt agms full charge
is about 53.3 volts varies 53.2-53.4volts....

I totally disregard the factory dash readout. It often reads .7-.8 volt
higher.

Also keep a daily log of volts amps from my Eagle Pro Delta View
phone app...

Best wishes in your cart journey..

Happy Cartin'

Thank you! We already installed a volt meter for another reason and now I'm glad we did. Learning how it works as I go. That helps - thanks. I was too chicken to cut any holes in the dash so this was my solution. Used a plastic box that I painted black and mounted it with a cell phone holder. Could possibly squish the wire along the back of the instrument panel the way the back up camera is mounted but I felt it was safer not to pinch it. The cup holder pops out super easily and pops back in easily too so this is very simple to do. Zip tied the wire to other wires that run under the cart to the battery compartment.

Heather

[HDaugus]

Originally Posted by ATrain

You can measure the resting voltage easily by switching the multimeter to DC and touching the red/black posts of each battery and adding them up OR, even easier, just touch the last red and last black in the series.

One thing to note is there is a difference between checking an individual battery and the entire pack. Think of your remote controller if you mix and match new/old batteries. You can measure the total voltage or the voltage of each battery. Total voltage may be good, but you may see one battery is new and the other is old. The new battery would have an above average strain on it because it's compensating for the old. Likewise, if you have a battery with a bad cell, it's lower voltage could be dragging the entire pack down and causing early degradation to your pack.

That measurement is only so useful, for a few reasons. What you really need is the state of charge under load, which means while you're driving the cart.

For me, I used alligator clips to hook the wires to my multi and then just had the wires sticking out the side of the seat while I drove around and tested things.

That'll give you some measurements, but what good are those if there's no reference? So you'll want to find the data sheets for your specific batteries. Here's a data sheet for a 6v Trojan T-105, which are commonly in these carts.

So if you happened to have 8, 6v Trojans...according to the datasheet, the float charge of a 48v pack is 54v (or 6.75v per battery). The float charge is what the cart should read when fully charged. Sometimes there's a physics effect that happens with lead acid batteries where immediately after charging, there are electrons on the surface of the plates. Think of it like the foam on top of a beer...it's "beer" but there's not really much there of substance. So after your cart is "fully charged", just drive it like 5 feet to clear that before taking a reading. That's just your fully charged reading.

Now for "State of Charge". If you look at the SOC section, you'll see the different individual 6v battery readings. So if you wanted to see how accurate a charge of 80% is, you would want to measure each battery and confirm it's close to 6.25v AND the entire pack should be 50v (8 * 6.25v).

These are just some ways to get some tangible insight to your batteries. For me, on a non-ICON cart, it seemed kind of waste until I measured one battery and noticed it was a magnitude off of the rest and was the reason the cart would shut off and had terrible range. It was a eureka moment.

Again, these measurements are most accurate under load. You can also buy a [URL="https://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-BT-100-Battery-Load-Tester/dp/B000AMBOI0/[/URL], but you just need to make sure you take care of the volts each tester can handle.

Very helpful. Thanks so much.
Heather

[holemania]

CartsRFun,

Did you wire the ScottyB digital meter all the way back to the positive/negative battery terminals or to a switched location?

Please advise...

thanks,
Dave