We made a quick, temporary battery mount to get our Ranger going – a rectangle of OSB with a few strips of 1×2 screwed in to hold the battery in place.
There’s a ratchet strap around the whole thing to ensure the battery stays on the board, and the board is screwed into the frame. Wired up, and we are driving!
We were able to revive three of the eight batteries that came with the Ranger, but we need four to move. So we’ve removed all of the lead acid batteries & cleaned up the trays. Battery acid isn’t great for a steel plate — baking soda water to neutralize it, then a scrub.
As a proof of concept, we’ve got the 48v lithium battery in the bed and will temporarily wire it into the vehicle. It’s wild that the one orange battery has about as much usable power as four of the red ones. Weighs about the same, takes up slightly more space but not that much.
We lost a few lights on the dash of our Ranger – and the parts diagram shows it as one monolithic (and ninety dollar!) part. That’s … more than I want to spend to find out I’m in forward mode!
Looking at the back of the unit, though, there’s little slotted buttons — like a bulb that can be removed. And, yeah, there are bulbs in this thing. Six of them. Which you can buy at NAPA for about a buck a piece ($5 for a 5-pack). Or replace with LEDs for under $0.40 each (and you’ve got spares for the future). For this specific LED replacement, the negative side goes up when you install them.
We’ve got a few petrol UTVs that are convenient, but it is a pain to keep refilling five gallon fuel containers so we can run these things. We tried to repair the 12v lead acid batteries, but that doesn’t look like a viable solution. Off to research 48v lithium ion battery options … until then, the Ranger is getting a bath.
When we picked up the field goal posts, we also checked out a Polaris Ranger EV that was being auctioned by a park / habitat preservation entity. We actually won the auction! Scott and Anya went out today to pick it up. The batteries are shot (of course! We’d measured the voltages already and bid with the assumption that new batteries would be needed), but everything looks solid otherwise. Fingers crossed we can get 48v of the batteries working to boot it up and confirm everything is functional.
