#2 Cables on my 87 Western

[vagabond]

When I got my 87 it was just the bare cart, no batts no cables no charger. I changed the charge receptacle to match the 82 pulled the batts from the 82 and built new cables from # 2 cable, it always seemed to run good but I never checked the speed, last week I picked up a set of refurbished batts from interstate and after charging I did a speed run using a garmin montana 65t gps and it topped out at 16.1mph. The 82 will top out at 13 .8mph.
My question is do you all think the cables made that much difference,

[Sir Nuke]

do both carts have the same gear ratio? do they have the same motors in them?

[vagabond]

Originally Posted by Sir Nuke

do both carts have the same gear ratio? do they have the same motors in them?

I wasn't meaning to compare the 2 different speeds, I just thought that the 16.1 was an exceptional speed for a stock resistor cart

[JohnnieB]

I've never knowingly been within a furlong of a resistor cart, so all I know about them is what I have gleaned from manuals and schematics, plus the scuttle-butt acquired on this forum, however based on that, 13.8MPH for the '82 sounds excellent to me and 16.1MPH for the '87 sounds exceptional.

Is the battery pack 36V, 42V or 48V? (Higher the voltage the higher the speed)

My guess is that just installing new cables helped with the top speed considerably and the fact they are 2Ga helped some more.

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A resistor drive system is a prime example of what bad cables do to a cart's performance.

The resistance coils added in series with the high current loop slows the cart down by dropping some of the voltage instead of applying it to the motor.
A bad cable has resistance, so it acts the same as the coils and drops some of the voltage that ought to be applied to the motor.

For maximum speed and performance, you want to eliminate as much resistance as possible from the high current loop.

Of course, there are practical considerations such as cost and really big cables are difficult to work with. Plus there is a point of diminishing returns.

[vagabond]

both carts are 36 volt, I knew the the # 2 cables would cut down on the resistance and and hopefully give me a little more speed, and since I had about 30 ft of #2 all I had to do was the buy ends and solder them on

[smokey tennis shoe]

I thought western didn,t start making their "carts" until 1986 or 88??

[scottyb]

My first conversion to solid state was a customer's Western back in my repair days. It was deceptively simple.