How to Diagnose a Bad Cell In Your Batteries

Diminished driving distance or dramatically slow going up hills can be a frustrating experience when you rely on your cart to get you around. Through troubleshooting with our customers, we have found having a bad cell to be a relatively common cause of cart performance issues.


Commonly Occurs After

  1. Cart sitting without being charged for multiple months
  2. Batteries that were used without any water in them
  3. Batteries that froze
  4. Can occur at any time with typical use with batteries over a year old

The Problem

One of your batteries has a bad or failing cell.

When a cell goes bad in a battery, it can significantly reduce your battery's ability to receive and hold a charge. Even 1 bad cell out of all the batteries can present as a reduction of driving distance by 30% or more or, in some carts, could cause your cart to crawl at a fraction of the speed it is capable of.


How to Confirm

  1. Set Multimeter: Set your multimeter to DC Voltage at 200VDC
  2. Red Probe: Place the positive probe of the multimer on the positive terminal of battery 1
  3. Black Probe: Place the negative probe of the multimer on the negative terminal of battery 1
  4. Record Reading: Write down the number that is showing on the multimeter
  5. Test Each Battery: Repeat steps 1-4 for each battery
    • All batteries should be within 0.1 volts of each other.
    • If you have 1 or more batteries that are off by more than 0.1 volts, you likely have a bad cell causing charging issues and reduced battery capacity


Equipment Used

How To Fix

Have a battery franchise store test each battery and follow their recommendation for replacement

Back to blog