Any damage done if you use regen on purpose?

[Cruise Master]

I have a steep hill down to the lake that I use my IQ cart for. Just for chuckles I put it in neutral and turned the key off to see how the roll away function behaved. Well heck it creeped down that hill so nice I was amazed. Got me thinking, If I got four people on the cart using the regen and brakes to control my descent would be almost perfect.

Question I have is does it do any damage to the motor? Does it generate a lot of heat braking the cart? Since it takes energy to slow it down, I assume it must be in the form of heat.

[Sergio]

It will damage the motor because You are not using Regenerative brake.

For Regenerative brake to work, the Solenoid must be closed in order for the batteries to act as a load to the current being generated by the Armature, which could be as high as the drive current.

When the cart is OFF or after the Solenoid disengages, the Controller is doing Dynamic Brake.

The Controller powers the Motor field coils using the "aux power", pin #9 on the controller and uses the Controller as the load to absorb the Armature current.

This does generate a lot of heat in both the Motor and the Controller.

Club Car did not really perfect the Regenerative Brake until the Excel system came out.

The Excel system can perform Regenerative brake all the way down to almost 0mph since it modulates/shorts the Armature to stimulate the flux in the motor and then releases the current to the batteries.

In the Excel system the Solenoid remains engaged even after You remove your foot from the pedal and it will not release the Solenoid until the cart has stopped moving for a few seconds.

The IQ system will revert from Regenerative brake to Dynamic brake below a certain speed which I am not sure what it is.

[Cruise Master]

Boy that was an interesting read. I would have never have thought that's how it worked.

To leave the key on I would be going way too fast down that hill ( it's also tree lined) before regen kicked in. Guess I just keep doing the mechanical brake thing.

Thanks for the lesson.

[_ogre]

you are basically towing your cart without being in tow mode

[scottyb]

Originally Posted by Cruise Master

Boy that was an interesting read. I would have never have thought that's how it worked.

To leave the key on I would be going way too fast down that hill ( it's also tree lined) before regen kicked in. Guess I just keep doing the mechanical brake thing.

Thanks for the lesson.

If you have the XCT control set up a downhill mode with rpm limit and braking - then just flip a switch for the big hill

[Cruise Master]

Originally Posted by scottyb

If you have the XCT control set up a downhill mode with rpm limit and braking - then just flip a switch for the big hill

Yes, Yes, Yes you and I will be doing business soon enough , but let me do the bling and suspension stuff first. Then I'll go after the costly drivetrain.

Hold that thought though.

[passthru]

I switch mine into neutral all the time to stop quietly to shoot pigs. I don't shut it off though.

Sent from my SM-J710MN using Tapatalk