Losing power

GEM Forum
1

My GEM is losing range and when I plug it in to charge I am now getting two flashing red lights rather than a regular charge light. Has anyone run across this before? Are the three year old batteries dying?

2

Hi and welcome to Electric Forum!

Hopefully this thread may shed some light on the trouble you’re having

http://www.electricforum.com/cars/neighborhood-vehicles/4821-2002-gem-car.html

If not just let us know and we’ll delve a little more into it. Good luck

EvMan

3

Probably but before w jump in the lake:

1 What charger do you have?

  1. What brand and type of batteries - Flooded, AGM, Gel? Are the real Golf Cart batteries or just size 31 Deep Discharge (marine)

3 Assuming flooded have you:

A. brightened and tightened all connections?

B. Taken a voltage reading of each battery to see how close they are to each other?

C. Taken a Specific Gravity reading of EVERY cell?

NOTE: IMHO a specific gravity check can give you more information than all other checks combined. You can get a decent hydrometer for less than 15 bucks at any popular automotive parts store.

If you have less than GC (Golf Cart) rated batteries and have not taken pristine care of them 3 years is not an abnormal starting point for failure. to rear it’s ugly head.

The afore mentioned checks will probably show 1 or more batterys going south.

If they all test even only then would I question the charger.

Rodney

4

Thanks for replying so promptly.
I have gel batteries and have been using a slow trickle charger to de-sulpherize them. There has been a definite decline in range. I have been through lots of battery issues with my previous GEM, but don’t remember getting a blinking red when charging before.

5

A red flash means the battery voltage is out of range. Most likely, one or more of the batteries is weak and not charging to full voltage. Check the voltage of each battery after running the charge down to were the GEM is sluggish. Compare the voltages carefully. If one or two batteries are lower than the others, even by a few tenths of a volt, they are weak.

Daniel

6

Thank you. Will check it out.

7

The batteries range from12.22 (2 of them) to 12.28 That seems like a pretty close range but I am no expert obviously.