"High Speed Switch" ?

cdressel

A neighbor recently bought a golf car that had an interesting toggle switch on the outside of the body. He was told that, "You get up to maximum speed, then toggle the switch to get a much higher speed".

The car is a 1992 Club Car DS, 36 volt with solid state controller. It's basically a stock car, and not "road-ready". It has no turn signals, etc.

First, there's an Off/On toggle switch mounted on the outside of the car, about where your left hand would drop as you were riding. There's a linkage attached to the throttle pedal assembly that appears to activate a make/break or on/off switch. This linkage appears to be professionally-made and is not just some cobbled-together thing. Then, there's a battery-type solenoid (maybe 100 amp) mounted on the frame near the motor.

So, near as I can figure out, when the throttle pedal is fully-depressed, that switch is "made". Then, if you toggle the manual switch, you activate the solenoid coil.

Now, here's what I'm really confused about: The solenoid contacts are connected to the motor with #8 gauge wire, so that when the solenoid is activated, motor connections S1 (Orange) and S2 (Blue) are shorted together through that #8 AWG wire.

My neighbor hasn't tried using the switch, yet. And, I'm not going to suggest he try it until I understand a little more about what happens when you short those two motor terminals together.

Of course, there's another question I have. If this is a legitimate modification, can I do it to my 1986 DS with solenoids? The motors and the motor connections look identical from the 1986 to the 1992.

Can anyone help?
Thanks
Chuck

BGW

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Marathon Man

its called a speed system or shunt not very good on the motors. it shorts out windings in the motor to give more speed

OLD MEC

If it was my cart I would throw the whole system away and save replacing motors and solid state controllers every so often. If the switch and wiring is left on sooner or later some one ( kid, wife, neighbor, or yourself if you are my age and forget ) is going to say OH WONDER WHAT THIS IS FOR and then you take the chance of burning up a motor at the very least??

scottyb

Agreed. They are bad for the life of the motor... Western used them for a short while but learned after replacing lots of motors that it was not worth the gain...

cdressel

Thanks to you all for the replies. Sounds like it's the typical, "Ya' don't get anything for nothin'."

I guess I don't understand enough about these motors but it sure surprises me that they'd even run (for a little while) with the field windings shorted out.

Thanks again for your insight and suggestions.

Chuck