Solenoid plastic melted off - RXV came to immediate halt

[DB Cooper]

What I thought it was a broken motor brake, proved to be a solenoid issue. Original thread here:
https://buggiesgonewild.com/showthread.php?t=170217

Effectively, I had just got done climbing a relatively steep hill (just me and my son who are both very light, <200 pounds combined). Fortunately, I had made it back to the top/flat ground and was going maybe 50 ft and the cart made a thunk and then stopped. If it failed on the hill, man that'd be rough. I had to figured out quickly how to undo the brake by switching the wires and get it out of the middle of the road. Fortunately, I was able to push it about 100ft to my friend's house who has a truck and trailer.

I took the brake off and it looked fine. The builder of the cart (who does include a warranty which I'm still in), confirmed the brake looked fine. He asked me what noises the solenoid was making, I said it was a double click, he said that means it's going on and then immediately off/safety mode. Around then, I just touched the red/yellow cable and the whole thing came out. You can see in the photos, the plastic just melted off. He said it must've gotten so hot.

He's going to replace the wires and the solenoid. I'm not convinced there isn't an issue with the controller, but we shall see:

[DB Cooper]

Will this work, price seems a lot better than EZGO online:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/350-AMP-Ezg...orig_cvip=true

Turns out that already sold, but seems like it's $1600 from EZGO and occasionally less on eBay.

[cgtech]

I know exactly what this is. You do have an extreme example of it tho.

Ezgo changed their cables for some reason, and the ring was too big to fit properly on the solenoid (not actually a solenoid fault] . Ring was too wide, preventing a solid connection. I cut them ring terminals just a bit to fit. Look it up. Just a tiny snip to allow a good fit. Dont blame the solenoid, wasnt their fault.

[DB Cooper]

Originally Posted by cgtech

I know exactly what this is. You do have an extreme example of it tho.

Ezgo changed their cables for some reason, and the ring was too big to fit properly on the solenoid (not actually a solenoid fault] . Ring was too wide, preventing a solid connection. I cut them ring terminals just a bit to fit. Look it up. Just a tiny snip to allow a good fit. Dont blame the solenoid, wasnt their fault.

Thanks, I did a search and couldn't find anything about snipping these things. I'm hopeful just swapping it out resolves my issue for now. I'll avoid that super steep hill from now on. The cart was only doing about 5 up it and I could see my volt gauge going down quite a bit, fortunately it failed after I crested the top.

Will be getting 2 AWG wires and next time I see a 350A for sale will snag one to hopefully avoid this. I think that wire/stud/solenoid just got too hot from all the work.

Unfortunately, that other posted changes his solenoid out which looked exactly like mine (melted a circle of plastic off) and he's still not running. My cart is still under warranty from the guy I bought it from, he said he's had to replace one solenoid before after someone was running a cart real hard, but I don't think it failed with the same plastic/falling out affair. We're quite gentle on our cart, and while we were riding up and down streets looking at Halloween decorations, it was a light load and we were only going for about 10 minutes before we hit the big hill (I've done that hill 2 other times, but with less running prior).

I'll report back, it will be a couple days before he's able to get the part and then drive over.

Finally, the one down side is if you have a failure like this or brake failure, you are really limited in coasting it home. My street is on a hill, would probably need 2-3 guys to walk it down so it doesn't just go out of control :(

[kgsc]

What cg is talking about is when the cable ring is put on the stud it could not lay flat because part of it is hitting the body of the solenoid. If you take a nip out the outside edge of the ring so it would now look like a D it will lay flat and get a good connection.

[DB Cooper]

Originally Posted by kgsc

What cg is talking about is when the cable ring is put on the stud it could not lay flat because part of it is hitting the body of the solenoid. If you take a nip out the outside edge of the ring so it would now look like a D it will lay flat and get a good connection.

Thanks, guess I'm not following. I thought the stud would need t make contact with the main body of the solenoid inside, I understood your message as snipping the end of the stud to allow the stud to go in deeper. I think I'm still misunderstanding it. Once I get the new one, I can probably visualize it better.

[kgsc]

Not the stud, the ring on the end of the cable.

[DB Cooper]

Originally Posted by kgsc

Not the stud, the ring on the end of the cable.

Got it, it's almost like a washer where we want it to go into the plastic body, not sit on top. So if I'm understanding, the recommendation is to trim it with like tin snips a bit decreasing the diameter slightly to allow it to go into/through the plastic rather than sit entirely on the top?

Thanks for the patience explaining this to me like the village idiot!

[kgsc]

Bingo

[DB Cooper]

Does anyone have a hypothesis to what exactly happened here. Clearly heat must have worn that plastic piece and then contact was broken. I'm unsure if I jam it back in if it'll still operate, I guess it might be worth a test.

Given the hill climb, I could tell the cart was working overtime, probably generated just enough heat to melt that.

Guess the question is, was the heat caused more by poor connection due to this spacing issue, or undergauged wired or an overworked controller? The hill climb while steep was probably only 20 seconds or so, and again the cart was only loaded with ~220 pounds of people.

Thanks team!