[ajbrown]

It has been a while since I have posted. I have not been reworking the wording as you will see , but rather enjoying life takes precedence. Now that I have gotten into this thread, I am having fun retelling my story from memory. Feel free to tell me if you see things that are wrong or could be done better or diffferently, or anything you have experienced which would help me when I do this again in the future.

One of the mistakes I made with this cart is I did not take any before pictures. What kind of a meathead is so excited to take the thing apart that he does not snap a couple of pictures with his lab assistant Caly on board? It was after I got the roof and body off I realized my mistake. A part of me wanted to put the cart back together just to take a picture, but a bigger part of me could not rationally justify the effort.

At this phase in the project I had a few things on my plan.

1. Add space for two new batteries to increase range. I had no idea yet HOW I was going to do this.
2. Add 10 inch wheels and 205-65-10 tires to gain a bit more speed (up to two MPH) on level ground.
3. Add a 3 inch lift kit because I love the look of a cart slightly lifted

The first stage of this project was going to be taking the cart apart. I needed to be able to get to the battery compartment to develop a plan for adding batteries. No matter what the project I love deconstruction. I could have made a living doing this; Alan, Director of Deconstruction. I have never been great at the second phase which is reconstruction, so that would have been another organization. That said, I am not a mechanic, thinking back, the last time I may have worked on a car was the 70s and it was usually as a helper. An electric golf cart is much simpler to understand than a car for me anyway. You have a set of batteries that store voltage and a mechanism to deliver the stored voltage to the motor. For my brain what makes an electric cart go is much easier to understand than a car as the cart has no starter, carburetor, alternator, fuel pump, fuel mixture and timing to think about.

Before I deconstruct, I wish to caution. This note is not meant to frighten, but just want to be sure folks are aware. Working on a 48 volt DC golf cart is not as dangerous as working on AC house wiring, but you still need to pay attention as you can generate quite a spark and some heat with any dead short. It is relatively easy to create a dead short in a cart if you get careless. Dropping a wrench across the posts of a battery can cause quite a shriek to involuntarily come out of your mouth. When working around the batteries always be careful or get protective tools. In addition, when I am going to be removing the body or working on a component like the controller I will disconnect the pack from the components and discharge the controller. The procedure to do that is the same as resetting the OBC (disconnect procedure) which can be referenced here: http://www.alltraxinc.com/files/Doc1...ub-Car-OBC.pdf. It is likely that professionals do not do this, but it makes me feel more comfortable.

Club Car currently has two body styles to my knowledge, the Precedent and the DS. In addition, the DS prior to 2000.5 has a different roof and frame to hold roof. The last distinction I can think of is regen (regenerative braking) versus series. A regen cart has a speed sensor on the motor which controls the top end speed of the cart (most evident going down hill), whereas a series cart rolls freely. This is relevant to this post only in that there is a different mechanism to change the cart from forward to reverse and they are attached differently. The regen cart has a rocker switch versus the series cart which has a handle. Great summary sheet here: http://www.cartszone.com/images/clubcarguide.jpg

This thread is about my cart which is a 2002 DS series cart. Before I get started, let me give a shout out to a product called PB Blaster. I have no affiliation with the product, but it really works http://blastercorporation.com/display.cfm?p=50003&pid=4. I did not have this when I first started and as a result had a couple of bolts that could not be saved using WD40. Time to rip this cart apart.

• Slide enclosure out of rails and store
• The roof, remove eight bolts and roof pops off
• The front windshield, two bolts hold the window frame to the front cowl, lift off whole window

You now have a “hot rod”. I love driving the cart around like this. Closest thing I have ever had to a convertible, let whatever hair you have left down and just fly! This picture is the cart after all of my work is done, as I have no convertible pictures with original, but it does show off my lab assistant.



Convertible fun is over, we comb our hair, check for bugs in teeth and start to get the rear body off.

• First thing is the access panel under basket, be careful with these two screws if they do not come out easy. Most of the time they come right out, but if not, force will not help, you will need to reach under and grab the blind nuts .
• Now, the back of seat and basket; with the access panel off, remove the two nuts under body which holds seat frame, and then the remove four bolts holding seat back, lift seat off.
  
• Bagwell trim next, It is held on my these little plastic fasteners called “Christmas Tree” rivets. I am not sure the “proper” way to remove these, I carefully slipped a thin screw driver under the trim and they pop right out (careful about the body paint). After the bag well trim is out remove the two screws in the bag well.
• Rear bumper can remain on and still get the rear body off, but since we are in deconstruction mode, take the four bolts off and it drops off.
• Remove the two screws holding the front of the rear body under the forward/reverse lever.

The body should now be loose, held on only by the wiring below.

• Taillights, remove the two screws in the trim of the light and pop the whole unit out. Document how the wires are connected to lights, disconnect wires, and wrap in electrical tape.
• Forward/Reverse lever. Need to remove a small screw that holds on the handle, then slide off handle. Careful here, this screw is easily breakable. Now remove the three screws holding in the F/R mechanism. Beware, there nuts in the F/R housing that may fall out.
• Charger socket, remove the four screws from outside of cart body, the unit will come apart, pull unit out of hole in body and reattach front so nothing gets lost.

The body should now lift off. The first time I removed the rear body it took me a couple of hours at least, as everything was new to me. After doing this project and having body on and off many times, I can take my DS rear body off in about 30 minutes. Here is the cart with no rear body and no batteries.



Looking at the picture below of the cart with the old batteries; the challenge of fitting new batteries begins to become evident. This picture is taken with me standing on the floor of the cart, facing toward the rear of the cart. . You can see the steering wheel in the lower right of the picture and my sneaker in the lower left. In the low center of the picture is the forward reverse switch and charger receptacle laying out of the way. At the top of the picture you can see the two wheel wells and a panel in the center. This panel is the mount point for the controller and solenoid (on left rear of panel and barely visible) and the OBC (beige box on right front of panel with black wire running through it). Whether it is obvious from picture or not, there is no chance of adding a new battery in front of the wheel wells. If two new batteries are going to be added without changing the look of the cart, they must be added to the center compartment. There are other ways to add two batteries that differ from mine. One example is the route my Dad took and can be told later in this thread.



In the picture below, I have removed the panel that holds the OBC, solenoid and controller. A Trojan 8 volt T875 and 6 volt T105 are the same size. They are each 10 7/8 inches long. That means we need in excess of 22 inches to have two batteries lengthwise in the center compartment. The ruler is there to give some perspective for sizing. You can see we do not have 22 inches between where the original batteries were and the motor. There is not exactly a ton of space.



In addition to all of that the picture below shows how the frame in the Club car rises as it goes to the rear. We cannot simply build rails for the rear batteries at the height of the back frame as the batteries would need to stick through the body (hint on Dad's solution).




To review, the issues in front of us are:

• the batteries must be added to the center compartment
• the panel holding the OBC, solenoid and controller are in the way
• there is not enough room between the two existing batteries and the motor to simply add two more

If you are still with me, next step is to modify the frame….