How to Diagnose a Bad Cell In Your Batteries
Diminished driving distance or dramatically slow going up hills can be a frustrating experience when you rely on your cart to get you around. Through troubleshooting with our customers, we have found having a bad cell to be a relatively common cause of cart performance issues.
Commonly Occurs After
- Cart sitting without being charged for multiple months
- Batteries that were used without any water in them
- Batteries that froze
-
Can occur at any time with typical use with batteries over a year old
The Problem
One of your batteries has a bad or failing cell.
When a cell goes bad in a battery, it can significantly reduce your battery's ability to receive and hold a charge. Even 1 bad cell out of all the batteries can present as a reduction of driving distance by 30% or more or, in some carts, could cause your cart to crawl at a fraction of the speed it is capable of.
How to Confirm
- Set Multimeter: Set your multimeter to DC Voltage at 200VDC
- Red Probe: Place the positive probe of the multimer on the positive terminal of battery 1
- Black Probe: Place the negative probe of the multimer on the negative terminal of battery 1
- Record Reading: Write down the number that is showing on the multimeter
-
Test Each Battery: Repeat steps 1-4 for each battery
• All batteries should be within 0.1 volts of each other.
• If you have 1 or more batteries that are off by more than 0.1 volts, you likely have a bad cell causing charging issues and reduced battery capacity
Equipment Used
How To Fix
Have a battery franchise store test each battery and follow their recommendation for replacement