Installing 48V-12V reducer in cart with factory wiring harness, How do it work???

[gunnardog]

Please excuse my electrical retardation. Kind of embarrassing since I'm in the power plant business. That kind of electricity is different.....anyway.

I converted from 36-48V and everyone was so kind in helping me get through that ordeal with Alltrax. Now I'm installing a voltage reducer. I have searched and found the wiring diagram for the stock factory harness and I see that the red wire connected to the (+) on the battery pack and goes to the state of charge meter (Voltmeter I guess?). So I connected the green from the reducer to the green on the factory harness, and black on the reducer to black on the harness figuring that would give me 12V in my harness for lights and 12V outlet.

Results are I have power to my horn and to my factory fuse panel (mounted on the inside of the left rear fender). I also have 12 volts to my taillight/ brake light connection when I measure from the negative on the battery pack to either the blue/white or the white. When I test from the blue/white to black on the pigtail or white to black I no longer have 12V.

Questions:

1. Am I connected correctly to my voltage reducer? (Grn-Grn, Blk-Blk, yellow to key switch) Since my horn works and I see 12V at pig tails I know it is making power.

2. Since my red wire on the original harness went to the positive on the battery pack, I have left it disconnected. Am I screwing up the circuit by not have the red connected somewhere?

3. Is there any other obvious mistakes I am making here?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[mooneyes]

Dog why are you adding a reducer if you already have a fuse panel

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by gunnardog

Please excuse my electrical retardation. Kind of embarrassing since I'm in the power plant business. That kind of electricity is different.....anyway.

I converted from 36-48V and everyone was so kind in helping me get through that ordeal with Alltrax. Now I'm installing a voltage reducer. I have searched and found the wiring diagram for the stock factory harness and I see that the red wire connected to the (+) on the battery pack and goes to the state of charge meter (Voltmeter I guess?). So I connected the green from the reducer to the green on the factory harness, and black on the reducer to black on the harness figuring that would give me 12V in my harness for lights and 12V outlet.

Results are I have power to my horn and to my factory fuse panel (mounted on the inside of the left rear fender). I also have 12 volts to my taillight/ brake light connection when I measure from the negative on the battery pack to either the blue/white or the white. When I test from the blue/white to black on the pigtail or white to black I no longer have 12V.

Questions:

1. Am I connected correctly to my voltage reducer? (Grn-Grn, Blk-Blk, yellow to key switch) Since my horn works and I see 12V at pig tails I know it is making power.

2. Since my red wire on the original harness went to the positive on the battery pack, I have left it disconnected. Am I screwing up the circuit by not have the red connected somewhere?

3. Is there any other obvious mistakes I am making here?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

There are two things you can do that will help others help you.
Identify the cart and identify the aftermarket item you are trying to install.

I had to check your other threads to find out you have a 2007 TXT PDS with a DCX400 running at 48V.

Add the particulars of your cart to your signature block so you don't forget to mention them when starting a new thread. (It is under USER CP on above menu)

Sounds like you have a remote turn on DC-DC converter with four wires. Did you get it from Carts Unlimited? If so it is the same one I have.

Positive 48V in = Red wire
Negative 48V in = Black wire (Note: Shared with 12V out)

Positive 12V out = Green wire
Negative 12V out = Black wire (Note: Shared with 48V in)

Remote turn on/off = Yellow wire.

There is a green wire from the 12V common on the fuse block. Disconnect it from within the battery pack and connect it the the green wire from the DC converter.

There is a Black wire that is common to all accessories that attaches to the main negative terminal of the battery pack. Leave as is and add the Black wire from the DC converter to the main negative terminal.

Connect the Red wire from the DC converter to the battery pack's main positive terminal. Your 36V LED bar-Graph battery meter will not work for a 48V system, so leave that red wire disconnected.

Your 12V accessories are now wired to the DC converter.

To get the DC converter to turn on, connect the yellow wire to the switched 48V terminal on the keyswitch. (It will be the terminal the short red wire to 36V battery meter is now attached to, so pull the short red wire and push on the yellow wire)

That ought to have your accessories up and running just like they were before.

-------------
One thing to remember about carts, the battery pack is not connect to the frame or body, so everything is a two wire system.

2007 Ezgo PDS 48 v
you need to feed the reducer 48v
the green is your 12+ .. should feed fuse block
the black is 12v-

[cgtech]

FWIW, the green wire at the back of the battery pack (in the middle of seat area) was the original source for 12v to lights (& fuse panel), if you would have hooked the 12v output from dc/dc convertor to that originally, it would have worked just like it did before.

[Jkry2121]

You dont have to do through the factory wiring harness. Your reducer doesnt have to be hooked up to ignition.

Originally Posted by Jkry2121

You dont have to do through the factory wiring harness. Your reducer doesnt have to be hooked up to ignition.

yep ... you can waste wire & have reducer on all the time

[Jkry2121]

Originally Posted by crash test dummy

yep ... you can waste wire & have reducer on all the time

Reducer on all the times nice if you have a Radio or a 12 volt usb outlet for charging phones like we put in some carts. Also its the length of a battery and then some of wire... not really a waste. But of course you do what you want to your cart, ill do what I want to mine.

Edit: Another use one of my customers had was a duck cart that made a duck sound when you hit the horn. They liked to show it off to people and having to turn the cart on to make a duck sounds kinda annoying. Oh and if you're wondering why I said Radio above its because I put a toggle switch on the dash for my Radios so I can turn them on and off when I want not when the carts on or off. Tons of other uses I can list off basically goes to back to its all personal preference.

[gunnardog]

JohnnieB I do have the same one that is sold by Carts unlimited. Unfortunately I didn't find out about Carts unlimited until I found this forum. I did just order the voltmeter/ face plate combo from them which is exactly what I was looking for so I'm excited about that.

It looks like I screwed up by connecting my black (-) input to my reducer to the black (-) wire in the factory harness that went to the battery pack before but i did not reconnect the black to the battery pack. Based on the electrical readings I was getting at my tail lights that makes sense. Your description of how to hook it up makes perfect sense.

I will make that change this afternoon and report back.

My reducer does have the remote switch that I wired to the three position key switch so it turns on when I turn the key on.

I can see the benefit of having the power available to the my 12V accessory plug or whatever by routing the remote switch to a toggle instead of the key. Would I just need to connect that to the hot side of the key switch? How much power does the system consume at rest if the key is on but nothing is running except for the voltage reducer? I wonder if it is enough to bother wiring in a separate circuit. I like the simplicity of the way it is setup now because I won't be the only one operating the cart and invariably my wife or kids will shut the key off and run in the house with the lights or something still on. (I am installing some LED light bars, not talking about the headlights which are hooked up through the key switch anyway)

Sorry for the limited info. I will update my profile for future threads.

Thank you everyone for your answers and ideas!

[JohnnieB]

I wired my DVM battery meter directly to the battery pack, so it is on 100% of the time.
It draws <1mA and mine has been on over 3 years and just as bright today as when I installed it.
My cart had a stock PDS controller in I when I installed it, so the voltage at the keyswitch ran through the controller and I wanted top monitor the battery pack rather the the Auxiliary Voltage of the controller.
With a DCX controller in a PDS, by the time the pack voltage get to the switched terminal on the keyswitch, it has gone through a diode, six plug/jack interfaces and three set of switch contacts, not counting the reed switch, so I stayed with a direct connection.

Note: Since you had a 36V battery LED Bar-Graph meter, you may already have the direct battery wiring in the wiring harness.


I've never measured the idle current on the DC-DC converter, so I don't know what it is, but I wouldn't leave it on all the time, since there are ways to feed the "preset" memories that some electronic devices have.

Of course, if you have to have 12V available all the for things like USB chargers and other gadgets, a separate 12V accessory battery might be a better idea than a DC-DC converter.