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How to Charge a Golf Cart With an Automotive Battery Charger

Golf carts are small battery-powered vehicles that are most commonly found and used on golf courses. These carts are also used as utility carts in some locations. Golf carts operate on multiple 6-volt or 8-volt deep cycle batteries. These batteries are designed to be discharged almost completely and repeatedly with low loss in performance. Golf carts usually come with their own charger, however a car charger can also be used to charge a golf cart. The trick is matching the voltage of the charger to the voltage of the batteries.

Things You'll Need

12-volt car charger
36-volt golf cart
Socket wrench set

Instructions

- 1
  Open the golf cart to expose the batteries. This is a 36-volt golf cart with six 6-volt batteries. Use the socket wrench to disconnect the batteries so they are connected in pairs. This can be done by disconnecting every other red positive battery cable. This produces three pairs of 6-volt batteries. The voltage of each pair equals 12 volts since you have two 6-volt batteries wired in a series.
- 2
  Take the battery charger and verify that the battery charger voltage is 12 volts. Take the first pair of batteries and connect the outside positive and negative terminals of the battery pair to the positive and negative battery charger cables respectively.
- 3
  Turn the battery charger on and the charger will charge two 6-volt batteries at a time. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 for each pair of batteries. Another option is to use additional battery jumper wires to connect the other two battery pairs in parallel with the first battery pair. This would allow all of the batteries to be recharged at one time.

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