1986 Club Car Won't Run

[jamkatt]

I am hoping that I can get some ideas on what might be going on with a 1986 Club Car I recently purchased. I bought 6 new batteries yesterday and charged them for 14 hours as suggested. I got the wiring schematics and I believe that I have everything hooked up correctly. Double check my hook up with pictures I took before I unhooked the old batteries. Went out this morning to try it out and nothing. I didn't get ant indication that there was any power in the batteries through the cart. Anyone have any ideas what this could be. I was told that the cart ran the last time it was used but I do not know how long ago that was (I am guessing it was a while). Also the cart was stored outside. I am not super knowledgable on carts but I am willing to try to learn and fix things myself. I only paid $100 for the cart (bought from a coworker) and it did come with a charger. Do you think this is something I can fix or should I just sell it and buy a newer cart?

[shadowman]

jack the rear up and put a jumper on the large post of the furthest left solenoid..thats the master turn key on put in gear and press pedal if cart runs its either that solenoid or the microswitch that activates it..........but that at least will tell you what your up against........keep it for now its a simple system and not very expensive to as far as the solenoids and micro switches.............................

[jamkatt]

My brother-in-law and I started trying to figure out what was wrong. We found a few wires that needed to be replaced so we did that. We also determined that the forward/reverse switch was broken (literally). I ordered a new one today once we found the problem. Only issue we had was that when we hooked the batteries back up we kept getting huge sparks when we tried to connect the negative cable. My brother-in-law works with industrial batteries and wiring all of the time (not golf carts though) and we could not figure out the problem because it was not sparking before we started. The forward/reverse switch fell to pieces when we were trying to replace a frayed cable. We put it back like it was but some of the plastic was gone and it no longer stayed together. Is there any chance this could have caused the sparks?

[shadowman]

double check how you cabled the batteries its soundes like you did something wrong.........the switch shouldn,t cause the batteries to to spark like that..........that happens when you put a cable in the wrong place........................