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Old 03-09-2011, 12:43 AM
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uthe54 uthe54 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Gardner, KS
Posts: 68
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4Ah is pretty weak. Both of mine have 9AH batteries.

Something else you might want to try is to take the battery out of the kart, charge it up good, test the voltage, and while you still have your multimeter on the battery, put a load (like headlight or anything else you have thats 12V) on the battery and see if the voltage drops substantially. If so, you've got a bad battery.

Only reason I say this is because I had a car battery that would charge up 100% according to my battery charger, but if I put the slightest load - even an inverter with nothing plugged into it - the voltage would drop to nothing. Needless to say the battery appeared good and fully charged, but couldn't start the car (or even power the dome light).

Battery voltage doesn't tell the entire story. Thats why good battery testers put a big load on a battery to emulate starting, then read the voltage while under a load. if you've got bad cells in your battery, your battery could be charging up to 12V, but over a short period of time the bad cells will consume power from the good cells, and actually drain itself.

Also, another note, you might already know this, but it's extremely hard on a lead acid battery when it's not charged up for a period of time. Even if the battery goes down to just 10V, it's destructive, and if left that way for a week, that battery will likely be toast.

here's a good chart...



sorry, this might be more info than you're wanting, but I find batteries very interesting and -it sounds nerdy - but enjoy reading about and messing with batteries.
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