70s cushman golfster

[patrick101]

I have an early 70s golfster and when I try to go forward or reverse the power gage goes to zero. The batteries show charged, the starter relay has voltage to it but I haven't tried to bypassed the power lead to it yet. Why would to power drop to zero when I try to go forward?

[Lochlin]

That normally means one of two things, your pack isn't really charged or your solenoid is bad. Put a volt meter on your battery pack. Obviously, you should have something north of 36v. While keeping the volt meter on the pack, hit the accelerator and see what happens. If they volts drop significantly, say 32v or less but that's a guess on my part, the cart might not move. The bottom line is that you have to be pretty darn close to 36v to activate that solenoid.

You can jump the solenoid as well by placing a jumper across the larger solenoid posts. Jumper cables work well for that. Note that, while jumped, the cart will want to go forward with the key switch and not the accelerator.

[patrick101]

I jumped the solenoid and the voltage dropped to zero and something started to get hot I think I have a short somewhere. When I removed the jumper wire it was hot.

[Leon willis]

Maybe a wire is corroded internally and is causing to much resistance I had that happen to some jumper cables