1988 Ez Go sparks at speed control board

[del50man]

I have a 1988 Ez Go and at the speed control board it sparks as it hits second bar.
Should I replace the board? And swiped arm? There doesn’t appear to be any space between the board and swiped arm.

[del50man]

Here is a photo

[binder49]

Yes. You need to replace both the board and the swiper. The arm doesn't need to be replaced. Just the swiper contact and wire. If you can't find one, you can get them on ebay.

[del50man]

Thank you!

[coosa]

Buying new ones is good advice, but you can probably extend the life of that one by carefully filing the wiper end and the contacts on the board. I used to file mine will a long, flat file to get them all the same height. It looks like just the surface is damaged, so you remove the damaged part and it's still got life in it.

Some consider that being overly thrifty, and some might just call me a cheapskate, but the last few years that I had my resistor cart it became hard to get good quality components, and I tried to get as much life as I could from them.

A couple of other tricks - save the old board and you may be able to salvage at least some of the contacts to use in the future. Another is to move the first contact into a working position if you have just one bad one on a board. The first one is just for the wiper to rest on when not engaged, so it doesn't carry current and will often still look new when the rest of the board is burnt up.

Good luck with it.

[del50man]

Interesting... never thought of that. I cannot find a board with the contacts in it, so I just bought new contacts and a swiper arm.