Osney

I was going to ask, re the original post - what is that socket called - do you have a link? I've looked online but can only come up with 12v lighter sockets or something designed for caravans. I might not be able to source something identical in the UK, but knowing what to look for is half the battle with search engines!

If it's only done 85 miles then it sounds like something's not been tightened up properly at the factory! Best of luck tracking it down, and bear in mind what Gorj found with his drive shaft nuts. Might just be a wobbly wheel.

Most likely loose steering rod ends or something else in the suspension. If you jack the front up so the wheels are off the ground then grab one of the wheels and try to rock it you should be able to see where there's too much play in any of the bolts attaching the suspension bars to the main body or in the track rod ends. These all take quite a battering, especially if you're going fast over rough terrain.

Very neat. I might do this myself. The cable in the glove box is such an afterthought. Mine even has a UK plug on it that came from Tesco - our biggest supermarket chain - rather than anything branded. Interesting what you say about loose nuts. My buggy knocks and clatters like it's falling apart. Time to get the torque wrench out!

I'd worked out how to do this a while back, but it's a useful tip. My biggest problem is that the mechanism gets covered in mud, as does the bit at the front which latches the brake on until you stamp on the foot brake pedal, causing both to seize up. For an off road vehicle, it's surprisingly open to the worst off road driving can throw at it!

Good to hear you managed to get it back, albeit slowly! I hope you can get it sorted without too much expense. I think I might need a name for my buggy too, rather than just The Buggy. My sister in law's called Alice though, so I'll have to think of something else!

I didn't check mine at first, because I didn't have anything to do it with. My dealer came and collected the buggy after I'd phoned him about the low voltage code flashing and the almost total loss of power going uphill. Fully charged it was fine, but it would give up after four miles or so. After it had been back to the shop the first time, I bought a fairly basic Chinese knock-off battery tester, that seems to do the job. It generally shows all batteries healthy once they've been on charge overnight, but after I've used the buggy for a few miles it shows up the duff batteries. I've not tested them since it came back after the last visit to the shop, as it's been running well. I've no idea what the dashboard gauge measures either. I've never seen mine dip below one bar off the top, even when it's flashing low voltage warning! Incidentally, the spec sheet for the discover batteries suggests they should be fine at -10, so it's probably one (or more) duff cells. I wonder how many replacements under warranty HiSun will fork out for before they decide to use a different supplier. EVGT6A-A.pdf

I do have the owner's manual, but not a workshop manual which might be more use! Looking through that version of the manual, the isolation switch must be a UK/European spec thing. It's a big red button on the front of the battery compartment, just below the lip of the seat in the middle. You can't miss it, so if you're not seeing it, it's not there! If I press mine in, it disconnects the batteries from everything else. Mine has the Discover dry cells too. I think my dealer only replaced the ones that tested as failing, unaware that others were on their way out too. I suspect the mechanic didn't know how to test the batteries properly the first time, either. Or didn't want to have to pull them all out one by one! Mine was the first of these buggies the dealer had sold, and they still haven't sold many a year later. They're used to petrol and diesel machines, but are still at the bottom of a steep learning curve where battery vehicles are concerned.

We don't often get down to -10 here, but it's been known to happen. I'll have to keep an eye out for that, so thanks for the warning! Removing the batteries is apparently a bit of a PITA, as they're heavy and the space is awkward, but as long as you've pushed the big red isolation switch in you shouldn't have much risk of electric shock. It's not like working on a car where the battery is earthed to the body. Best of luck with it!

Thanks for the useful advice. The charger fitted is one of these - https://delta-q.com/product/ic1200-industrial-battery-charger/ - and it is indeed one of the best you can get. It's reprogrammable for different battery packs, including li-ion although they recommend a battery management system for those, too. I might look into alternatives when the current batteries fail - at the moment they're working OK, seven out of the original eight being replacements. I can see keeping wet cell batteries clean being a problem with these buggies. Mine gets filthy when it's wet and muddy! My main concern is that the batteries are designed to give ten times the range I need on a normal day, so I'm always only taking 10% charge off the top as it were, before recharging for the next day. I wouldn't want to run them completely empty, but I worry that only ever taking a little power before recharging could end up damaging the battery as much as taking too much.

That's why I'm quite glad they replaced mine under warranty. The cost of the batteries seems to make up almost half the cost of the vehicle, which is crazy. I think the biggest problem is that there's so few of these machines out there. Polaris do a similar version of the Ranger, so it might worth looking in on those forums for answers too.

Mine went back to the dealer several times, and I think they replaced two, then another two and then three most recently. They're a good dealership, to be honest - have been here forever selling lawnmowers, chainsaws and all that sort of stuff and only took on the HiSun franchise recently. They understand petrol engines, but batteries not so much! The mechanic didn't get a lot of help from the UK importer either, but finally worked out how to drain test the batteries. That's presumably what yours will have done, and is the only sure way to tell if one of these batteries is a dud. The symptoms with mine were a little different to what you're describing. I often had a 'full' charge according to the meter on the dashboard, but the buggy would struggle with a hill and then start to flash the 4C53 error, which the handbook says is low voltage. I bought a fairly cheap lead-acid battery tester from Amazon, which seemed to be quite good at identifying the duff cells once I'd limped home after a hill incident, but would show them all as fine after an overnight charge. One of the things that occurred to me is that while the handbook says to plug the charger in whenever you're not using the buggy, I've read elsewhere that these batteries are designed to be fully discharged and recharged regularly. They apparently reach full efficiency/capacity (I'm not an expert!) after a few dozen charge and drain cycles. Most days I use mine to go up the hill on my farm to check my cows. It's between four and five miles round trip, depending on whether they've gone to hide in the gorse at the farthest end of the farm or are waiting patiently at the gate in the hope of a feed. Sometimes on the way there - uphill most of the way - the battery charge meter will drop one bar, but by the time I've made it back home the meter's usually showing full again thanks to regen braking. I'd plug it in to charge anyway, and then not use it again until the next morning. My worry is that this might have actually been the wrong way to treat the batteries. Either I should have been waiting several days until they were quite drained before recharging them, or I should have been going a lot further on a trip than five miles. The handbook is not particularly forthcoming on this, and I've had no reply to my emails to both UK importer and HiSun itself, so this remains just a theory. Fingers crossed, the buggy seems to be working OK now. I did a six and a half mile trip today with no problems, and it doesn't seem to bog down on hills quite as much. It's still not particularly fast, but I can live with that.

This is the battery fitted as standard - https://discoverbattery.com/products/sla-vrla-batteries/industrial-agm-dry-cell-batteries/EVGT6A-A-AM I'll be interested to see what responses this thread gets, as mine haven't been brilliant - seven of the eight replaced under warranty so far!

I've had seven of the eight batteries replaced now, and finally the E1 seems to be working properly (fingers crossed!) I always put mine on charge when I finish using it, and it stays plugged into the wall socket until I take it out again. Daily run is only about five miles, which barely registered on the charge meter on the dash, but it was getting stuck and flashing a low voltage warning whenever I went up a moderately steep hill. What Gorj says about the batteries sitting unused for a while - either at a dealer/distributor or even in the factory pre-fitting - is probably right. These things are designed to be charged and drained repeatedly; they don't like being left idle!

Yes, there's nothing wrong with tried and tested older technology - as long as it works! There's a company over here in the UK that have developed a lithium ion battery powered quad bike, which looks brilliant. The only problem is I could buy four Honda ATVs for the same price. I know gas is getting expensive, but even so it would take a long time to recoup that price difference! What I'd really like to do is find someone else reasonably local who also as an E1, so that we could compare notes and maybe I could try theirs out. At the moment they're rather thin on the ground in these parts though.

It's certainly a steep learning curve for repair shops used to dealing with petrol engines! The other thing that can impact on performance with electric vehicles is if the cables are not well connected, or there's corrosion in the terminals. I've got a couple of books on converting ICE cars to electric, as I'm thinking about doing that to my classic Alfa Romeo. I just need to find time to read them properly, then identify all the various components in the UTV and test them one by one!

I always assumed 45 miles was optimistic, but 5 miles isn't really good enough for anything! All but one of the batteries on mine have been replaced now, and I haven't had a recurrence of the 45c3 error in the past few days. I've not been pushing it that hard though - need to go for a long run and then try a hill. It's frustrating, because it could be such a good little buggy for what I need, if it would just work as advertised.

Still working on a solution. It's back in the dealer's workshop now. Apparently of the original eight batteries, four had dead cells and were replaced the last time it was in. Their testing kit depletes the battery completely, so the process of testing them is quite time-consuming! Testing the voltage won't tell you all that much about the batteries, you really need to do a load test. I am no expert though. Incidentally, my buggy throws up the 4C53 error even when the power meter is showing full. I've never had it show anything less than one bar off full charge, and I wonder if that might be part of the problem. I was told to plug in and recharge at the end of each day's use, but often that was only a few miles. Deep cycle batteries are designed to be drained, and get more efficient after they've been cycled a few tens of times. Mine have never had that kind of use because at least one has been faulty. A shame that the Canadian distributor isn't being helpful. The batteries are made by a Canadian firm (albeit in China like everything else!), so you'd think they'd be more helpful. I'll post updates here if I have any. Good luck getting yours sorted.

Thanks. That's useful information. Mine has always struggled with hills, and I was worried that was just the way the buggies worked. I thought my dealer had already replaced all the batteries, but I'll check with them about that. They've certainly replaced some of them.

I have a HiSun Vector E1 (as they're called here in the UK) and have been running it for about a year now. It has an annoying problem that my dealer has not yet managed to fix. On a full charge, at the start of the day, it works fine - albeit not the quickest machine in the world. I use it on my hill farm here in Scotland, and it has to climb a bit, although nothing that would leave you out of breath walking. The E1 copes with these hills no problem, until it's done about four or five miles, then it starts to struggle noticeably, and throws of the 4C53 error on the dashboard readout - low voltage according to the manual. Sometimes it does this even while the charge level indicator is showing a full charge. It's been back to the dealers twice now, and they've replaced all of the batteries. I've emailed the UK distributor for HiSun in the hope of an answer, but as yet have had no response. My dealer is trying to get an answer from them too, before taking the machine back to try and fix it again. Meantime I can only use it for a short while each day. I'm no electrician, so has anyone on here any idea what might be going on? It seems that it is struggling to draw enough power from the battery pack going uphill, leading to a voltage drop that trips the error code. But if that's the case, then the E1 is surely not fit for purpose.

I have a Vector E1 (as they're called in the UK), and it's good, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend them. They're underpowered and mine certainly struggles on the hills around where I live (Fife, Scotland, so hills, not mountains). One particularly annoying thing is that after about four or five miles of use, the slightest hill has the screen throwing up a 'low voltage' error as the batteries can't seem to supply enough power. After about ten miles it just gives up altogether, even though the battery charge indicator on the dash is showing full or one bar off full. It's been back to the dealer twice, and had the whole battery array replaced, but it still does it. Now waiting for advice from the UK importers before it goes back a third time. It's also go more grease points than is entirely reasonable, and is quite difficult to clean effectively if it gets muddy. The lack of front mudguards means it throws mud (and cowpats - this is a livestock farm!) at you. I've asked about the full cab kit for it, but have yet to be given a price let alone availability. Meantime some DIY rubber mudflaps help, but why not an option to start with? On the plus side, it's wonderfully quiet and does pretty much everything I need it to do - when it works!