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[BigDave83]

When I bought the building I built my living space in, it was an old brake testing facility. Well it came with tools and a lot of other things. among them is an old Yale walk behind 2 stage fork lift. It is a 12V system, the charger for it went bad, I bought one off ebay and it worked well and then the board burnt out in it. I kind of wired around it but some how I turned a 12v charger in to one that does 17 plus volts. I have been looking for another used 12v forklift charger but about all I see is 24, 36 and 48 volt units.

I have not torn in to the old 12v charger it is a huge 240v thing, I did find it popped a fuse so 30 dollars later I had 2 big 15a fuses, I put one in and it blew immediately. So I just pushed that charger off to the corner and hooked up my 12v car charger it does charge but it takes a while, and if I run it at 60 amps it over heats and shuts down. So I run it several cycles at 40a and once I have it charged a small smart trickle charger seems to be able to keep it topped off. I unplug the Anderson connector and charge it from there.

 I am a cheap A, and well I really don't use the thing that often for me to warrant spending big bucks on a new 12v charger. I see some used 24V chargers and have been looking for a way to step that down to 12V.

Thinking maybe some of the golf cart folks may have some input. Also just started to look at solar charge controllers and need to figure out how they actually work, thinking maybe one of them could be used to control the voltage.

Appreciate any input.

[yorkdude]

Let me think about this but……off the top of my head I would suggest looking @ FSIP & Lester they both are industrial supply companies that do this exact thing.
Flight systems international
&
Lester electrical
Might make them pop up easier for you.

[Bentley]

Good luck, not your man on this one.  You did not ask for unsolicited advice, but have you ever thought Lithium?

[yorkdude]

Good luck, not your man on this one.  You did not ask for unsolicited advice, but have you ever thought Lithium?

I thought about that but although I have converted lots of fla carts to lithium, not sure how they would fare in an application like this but definetly worth a hard look.
Look into “Vatrer”, “Cloud energy” and “Eco”, they are all reputable lithium suppliers.
Not to go down a rabbit hole here but in lifepo cells there are “1c” & “2c”, 2c are the better of the two, what some mfgrs do though is configure the bms on 1c to allow them to over exceed their comfortable range.
Anyway if you google those terms etc you will get a better idea of what I am rambling about.