Hey all! I’ve got a 1999 E825 my Grandfather purchased new way back when. It got a couple of summers worth of golf course and round town use before he passed and then it pretty much sat unused. My Dad put some new batteries in it and had it running for a bit maybe 10-15 years ago, but something wasn’t working right with the charger and the batteries quickly went out of a condition. From there on out it spent a couple of years sitting outside our shop through a few SD winters before ending up in an unheated open machine shed on our farm. It’s been on a project list of mine to get it up and running again either to use as a golf cart at our local club, a cruise-around-the-farm Beer cart, or just to sell and be done with. Yesterday I pulled it out of the shed and rinsed it off with the hose. (It was SUPER dirty!) after a thorough rinsing on the outside I pulled of the dash panels and seat and gave them a good rinse on the driveway. All the electronic bits were dry (far as I could tell) and despite all the mouse droppings and what not, none of the wire looms or harnesses showed any sign of chewing or other obvious wear and tear. All the fuses (on the Circuit board, contactor, and Fuse box) were good. There are a few unconnected wires, but they all appear to be for extra options the car didn’t come with.
Today I went to Wal-mart shudder and grabbed 6 EverStart 29DC Deep Cycle batteries. Maybe not the best, but they had a 2 year replacement warranty on them and I’m looking to dump as little money into this as possible at this point, till I decide whether I want to keep it or sell it, anyway.
I swapped in the new batteries this afternoon and when I reengaged the disconnect I heard a slight click from somewhere in the electronics and the dash display lit up briefly (2-3 seconds total) with a ‘34’ and then ‘430’ (Or something like that… Didn’t seem like it was any kind of error code, but I’ll go grab the exact numbers if needed) and then nothing. No horn, lights, or wipers. No other dash lights. Key on/off/on doesn’t produce the numbers again, only throwing the disconnect and waiting a bit before restoring it will produce them again. The only other indication of life I can get from it is placing the drive mode switch to Road with the parking brake in the off position, which then causes a high pitch warning horn to sound from the Circuit board. The warning horn remains on regardless of the key or any other switch position and only goes off with either the drive mode switch or setting the parking brake. Beyond that… I got nothing. No lights, nothing happens when I press the accelerator. Nothing. I checked the battery’s and all are showing over 12 volts. I checked the two main wires going into the Motor Controller and I’ve got 74 Volts there. It’s the Schott Charger and Version 1 of the printed circuit board.
The only other thing of note would be the Contactor above the circuit board. Nothing I can do get’s it to engage. I’m not even sure there’s power getting to it, since when I manually press the contactor in nothing happens.
With all that said, I’m at a loss as to where to start trouble shooting this. I’m already fairly certain there is an issue with the charger (then again, maybe not since I read in the service manual last night that the charger won’t work if the total system charge is below 68 volts, so maybe that was the problem my Dad had… especially since he’d only put in 27DC batteries), but could it cause and issue with the contactor and circuit board power? What about the motor controller? I’m getting power to it, but have no idea if anything coming out of it is good or not. Any suggestions on where to start sticking the multimeter to no for sure?
It probably flashed 420. Kind of a recommendation on what you should do before you undertake a restoration
Run the VIN through NTSB.gov and check the recall status. If it’s not yet been upgraded, start calling Polaris dealers until you find one that will make the repairs. The big one is the 72 to 12 vdc converter system. Get that done or you’ll be chasing noids forever in that old bucket.
Oh, and the schott charger you have in there is so obsolete it can only be reprogrammed with a TRS-80. Shitcan it and get a Delta q
Oh Boy! Here we go.
(Anybody taking bets on how many posts I can stretch this one out to?)
Hey Metal,
Welcome to the mysteries of a dead gem.
Does your family tree have a little branch over to a family of Frankenstein? It may help.
First, How are you with a meter? Do you have one?
If not very good, you will be after we are done.
The fact that the display momentarily wakes up when batt switch goes ON is a good sign.
I think it is showing you the miles or hours put on the car. (something like that)
I’ll have to look that up since 34,430 miles sounds like ALOT of miles.
That buzzer when brake is dropped ia also a good sign. It is also a diagnostic clue that provides a direction to go next.
Hopefully you got the top and bottom of the dash off so we can get into the meaty bits and check a few readings?
Better than going full Hammond and staying in it when it goes over the cliff! lol
Yeah, I mostly figured a Charger upgrade was probably right at the top of the list. Maybe even grabbing a version 2 circuit board with the onboard converter
as for the codes that flashed on the dash. It was a “34” for 1-2 seconds followed by “468” for 1-2 seconds.
I’m ok with a meter as long as I know where to touch the probes to and the numbers I should be seeing. I’ve got a good digital one, so as long as I’m tuned to the right setting on the dial, it works great.
It’s showing the numbers in sequence, 34 then 468. No WAY is it 34,468 miles! I’d say 468 miles sounds probably about right, though. 34 hours seems low, on the other hand.
Top and bottom are clear (though I just remembered I need to go out and the throw the top dash back on before bed since it’s suppose to rain tonight! lol)
Hopefully it’s a quick diagnosis in the circuit board or charger, otherwise this might get really spendy really quick. lol
v.2 boards were recalled also. You need the black finned box from Surepower and all the bits that go with it.
Or did you mean a DQ charger with built in DC-DC converter like they use from 2010 on up? Not sure if those will work on the OG doombuggies. Their problem, har-har, one of many, is that you can’t turn the 72V on without the 12V, but you need the 72 to turn the 12 on.
Was it 0034 then 0468 or no leading zeros. I have to double check for the T1, but the later T2 (02-04 years) was only mileage in reversed sets. 1000-100-10-1 was displayed first then it was 10,000,000-1,000,000-100,000-10,000.
The controllers store both sets of info, key-on hours and miles
34 hours, followed by 468 miles makes more sense here.
I need to go out and the throw the top dash back on before bed since it’s suppose to rain tonight!
Good call. even better to tarp over the whole cab. Keep it all dry.
Let’s start simple. But a little more work.
Split the covers off the dash pod and tunnel in towards the key switch.
Super simple, find the two wires, jump those wires and see if the dash lights up.
We are also listening for a loud “clack” from the right side of the cab. That will be the main relay. Don’t jump when it happens.
Or you will get a 04 on your dash display. That means your e-brake is on.
PSA: Key switch wires are 72v on 99-04. You might hear a loud crack from your balls. Don’t jump when that happens, you might drop the wires and f-up a perfectly good RPG target.
I was going to get into the crazy confused orientation state of this wire next.
In factory form (recall NOT applied) version this wire is actually B- (-72v).
When the new wiring update is applied this wire turns into +12v.
On the mid-gen (05-13?) cars this wire is B+ (+72v).
I knew you would… You rarely, if ever, miss any bases…
…but this was about making sure we had a pristine OG model to light on fire, push off a cliff, shoot up with large caliber weapons, drive over with a 5 ton roller and then bury with a bulldozer.
This part throws me off unless you had the key in the ON position when you through the main battery switch. As I learned the hard way, you want to have e-brake engaged and key OFF when you throw the main battery switch AND you want to wait a minute or two before you then turn the key if its been without batteries for more than an hour or two.
This too is odd but we’ll learn more about this as you walk through the process with AssyRequired.
Normally you’d get the buzzer if you have batteries connected and you release the parking brake with the key OFF. Once you turn the key ON, the buzzer would stop and the contacter will loudly click into the engaged position and dash would light up.
But there are things like the Battery temp sensor which can throw a wrench in the process along with the charger lock-out switch(which prevents you from moving the car when AC power is plugged in).
I believe both of these as part of normal car function.
The main power switch will momentarily wake up the display and charge the caps.
Even during Key OFF.
The second bit about the buzzer sounding is just saying e-brake not set. Odd that it is triggered with the direction switch but I think I have run into that before.
Cycling the key does not change anything and sounds like it may be unhooked. Possibly unplugged from the Schott Charger? It might be part of the misc disconnected wires MK noted.
Ok, I just unbuttoned the steering column and the key was hooked up just fine. Popped the wires off the terminals and checked the ignition switch for continuity and it’s working as it should. I then touched the wires together and… nothing. Checked both wires with the multimeter (red on the wire and black on case of the schott charger, which should work as a ground point since a ground wire is attached to it?) Anyway, the red/green wire indicates around -14mv and the orange wire indicates around -25mv.
Did some more checking around the relay/contactor. The small red and black wires on the terminals on the bottom side of the relay both indicate 75V on the multimeter. The large black wires indicate nothing. The blade fuse is intact and when I manually press the contactor in I get continuity from one large black wire to the other, as expected.
I notice the Red/Green wire runs through the loom all the way down to the Schott Charger (Which I really expect is actually SHOT at this point lol). I suppose the next step is to bypass the charger and see what happens? Sooo… How would one do that? or is there another spot I should test first?
