Put a 96v motor and stuff in the car. Drove it around a bit but needed some minor work done on horn/taillights. The mechanics shop pulled the car back to my shop. Said it wouldn’t run. Battery voltage is fine and contactor is engaging. The pot switch wires are connected correctly to the controller.
I’m suspecting it might be the pot switch but am not sure how to test it or the controller.
Any ideas???
Nomas
Troubleshooting is the bane of technological mankind and I wish you luck. That said, here is where I would start. You said that the car did run so we can assume that every thing was connected correctly. Check to see that these mechanics didn’t change anything. Don’t just ask them; check it yourself. Check for control voltage at the controller spade terminal. Unplug the two wires from the potbox and check resistance while moving the lever or better yet pushing the throttle pedal. Depending on how the controller is set up it will vary between 0 and 5,000 ohms or 5,000 ohms and 0 or between 0 and 5 volts. The important thing is that it does vary and goes all the way to the low end of the scale. Does the arm on your potbox go all the way to the stop or is the throttle cable or lever holding it slightly away? Many controllers have a feature called “high pedal disable” which is a safety feature so you can’t turn the system on with your foot on the floor. Do you have a schematic? What kind of controller do you have? Do you have the mfgr’s manual? Let us know what you find.
tommyt
[QUOTE=Tom Thomson;4792]Nomas
Troubleshooting is the bane of technological mankind and I wish you luck. That said, here is where I would start. You said that the car did run so we can assume that every thing was connected correctly. Check to see that these mechanics didn’t change anything. Don’t just ask them; check it yourself. Check for control voltage at the controller spade terminal. Unplug the two wires from the potbox and check resistance while moving the lever or better yet pushing the throttle pedal. Depending on how the controller is set up it will vary between 0 and 5,000 ohms or 5,000 ohms and 0 or between 0 and 5 volts. The important thing is that it does vary and goes all the way to the low end of the scale. Does the arm on your potbox go all the way to the stop or is the throttle cable or lever holding it slightly away? Many controllers have a feature called “high pedal disable” which is a safety feature so you can’t turn the system on with your foot on the floor. Do you have a schematic? What kind of controller do you have? Do you have the mfgr’s manual? Let us know what you find.
tommyt[/QUOTE]
The controller is a Curtie 1231. Checked the pot box and all is okay. The bat voltage is at 101.2(8- 12 v. deep cycle trojan bats.). The controller is not putting anything out. The weird thing is that when I turned off the contactor, I noticed that the voltage took over a minuite to drop all the way down to 0 again.
I downloaded the mauual from the the mfg. website and went thru the troubleshooting procedure and it all points to the controller. Good thing the mfg. has a 2 year warranty on the part.
Thanks for your help.
I had that problem. I am not sure but after going through system I found some poor crimps on a couple of cables. Mine was still running but when I went into coast mode I noticed it took a long time for voltage to drop to 0. After fixing ALL of my connections again never had that trouble again. Not sure if that was reason but never saw that again on my voltmeter.
Hope this helps,
A slow drop off in voltage at shutdown is normal. The controller has a capacitor which is bleeding down. You may have noticed an arc when you connected the controller or at the contactor points even tho the controller was off. This is due to the capacitor charging up and is why some folks put a resistor across the contactor points - to keep the capacitor charged. Don’t worry.
tommyt