Please see my later post (#4) for even more weirdness!
I’m sorry if this has been answered, I did search for it. I’m a new owner of the gem car and also of this forum so please forgive my ignorance. The car is a 2001 2 seater that was bought new by my next door neighbor who had a stroke and can’t drive any more. It had sat for about a year before I was able to talk him into selling it. Batteries were used up so I put in a gently used set of gel cells that seem to be fine, they charge up and give me about 22 miles range. Just last night I plugged in the charger and after about 15 minutes I heard it beeping high/low tones and the LED was flashing red/green. From the manual I see this is supposed to mean battery disconnected (no way) or logic failure (does this mean in the charger or in the car?)…anyway it does charge up to 100% and then starts this beeping behavior! Checked all terminals & wires, all tight and put my 12V Schumacher on each battery by itself, they all show full charge and capacity. I can live with the beeps but sure would like to know what is going on! Thanks for any possible help or suggestions!
On edit…I’ve been charging these batts with normal results for the month or so I’ve had the car, it just started the odd behavior yesterday. Also today I called the Zivan importing company and got a very rude fellow who talked so fast I couldn’t even understand him much less write down anything…I was finally able to gather he was telling me to pull the charger out and send it to them along with a bunch of info…after which they could “take care of it”. I thought maybe someone there would be able to at least TRY to help me over the phone but no such luck. Bah.
22 miles is good. What type of batteries were in the GEM originally? This is important because the profiles are different. “F” is the setting for flooded batteries while “C” is the setting for gel batteries. There is a small selector switch on the top of the charger. It may be covered by a seal. Check this before going further. The flooded setting may overcharge gel batteries. Also, look for a small label on the charger saying “micro upgraded.” This indicates that important software updates have been completed. I have dealt with Electric Conversions, the US Zivan dealer numerous times and never had an issue. Below is my list of Zivan error codes.
Daniel
http://www.electricforum.com/cars/neighborhood-electric-vehicles-hev/2507-zivan-ng1-charger-error-codes.html
In the stack of paperwork I found the installation instructions for installing the Zivan charger that has pencil notes on it indicating to me the original charger was replaced, apparently several years ago and I am told it has always had gel batteries since then, but I will check the things you suggest!
I suppose I’ve recharged them 50 times since I got the car and never had it do what I described until the other day which is why I suspected something was amuck. 
I will let you know what I find out and thanks a lot!
[QUOTE=GEMmechanic;12381]22 miles is good. What type of batteries were in the GEM originally? This is important because the profiles are different. “F” is the setting for flooded batteries while “G” is the setting for gel batteries. There is a small selector switch on the top of the charger. It may be covered by a seal. Check this before going further. The flooded setting may overcharge gel batteries. Also, look for a small label on the charger saying “micro upgraded.” This indicates that important software updates have been completed. I have dealt with Electric Conversions, the US Zivan dealer numerous times and never had an issue. Below is my list of Zivan error codes.
Daniel
We drove the GEM last night, over to the park and around there…probably about 12 miles, I didn’t think to check it Battery power was about 90% when we got home, it was dark and I just parked it overnight. This morning I went out to get the newspaper and figured I’d just go ahead and plug in the charger…had breakfast, read the paper and went outside to check on some things Daniel suggested, and…the charger had shut off normally with the green LED glowing and the display showed 100%. So it ‘fixed’ itself overnight…:eek:
Obviously something has changed but I have no idea what, and now I can’t imagine how to fix it when it ain’t broke! arrgh
[QUOTE=karlschneider;12369]I’m sorry if this has been answered, I did search for it. I’m a new owner of the gem car and also of this forum so please forgive my ignorance. The car is a 2001 2 seater that was bought new by my next door neighbor who had a stroke and can’t drive any more. It had sat for about a year before I was able to talk him into selling it. Batteries were used up so I put in a gently used set of gel cells that seem to be fine, they charge up and give me about 22 miles range. Just last night I plugged in the charger and after about 15 minutes I heard it beeping high/low tones and the LED was flashing red/green. From the manual I see this is supposed to mean battery disconnected (no way) or logic failure (does this mean in the charger or in the car?)…anyway it does charge up to 100% and then starts this beeping behavior! Checked all terminals & wires, all tight and put my 12V Schumacher on each battery by itself, they all show full charge and capacity. I can live with the beeps but sure would like to know what is going on! Thanks for any possible help or suggestions!
On edit…I’ve been charging these batts with normal results for the month or so I’ve had the car, it just started the odd behavior yesterday. Also today I called the Zivan importing company and got a very rude fellow who talked so fast I couldn’t even understand him much less write down anything…I was finally able to gather he was telling me to pull the charger out and send it to them along with a bunch of info…after which they could “take care of it”. I thought maybe someone there would be able to at least TRY to help me over the phone but no such luck. Bah.[/QUOTE]
The zivan does have a sticker saying Micro Upgraded so i guess that’s good. The little miniature rotary switch has about 16 positions that are labeled 1 through 9 and A through F. There is an additional sticker on the front of the charger that has a little tiny chart that seems to indicate that position F is for flooded batteries and C is for Gel. It apparently has been set on F for a long time, probably the old folks who owned the car had no idea about this option and I just found out the guy who was working on it is well-known around this area to be a complete dufus (my partner knows him personally). I changed the switch setting to C, will observe what happens now. You probably saw my other post where the charger behaved “correctly” this morning which is still strange but perhaps it was because we ran the batts down more than usual last night?? Today I got out my good Fluke meter and measured the battery voltage, every one was exactly 14.50 which seems high to me! I believe you solved that part of the riddle by noting the flooded setting could (and probably was) overcharge them. We shall see…and thanks again, I will let you know how it shakes out. Regards,
Karl
[QUOTE=GEMmechanic;12381]22 miles is good. What type of batteries were in the GEM originally? This is important because the profiles are different. “F” is the setting for flooded batteries while “G” is the setting for gel batteries. There is a small selector switch on the top of the charger. It may be covered by a seal. Check this before going further. The flooded setting may overcharge gel batteries. Also, look for a small label on the charger saying “micro upgraded.” This indicates that important software updates have been completed. I have dealt with Electric Conversions, the US Zivan dealer numerous times and never had an issue. Below is my list of Zivan error codes.
[/QUOTE]