Battery Cables

[gwh1bass]

Great site with a lot of information to digest. Only being a cart owner for a few days now it appears my 2006 EZ GO currently has 4 ga. cables for the battery to battery connections, but the cables coming off the battery pack are a smaller diameter. Did it come from the factory like this? It seems like they should be at least the same gauge as the battery interconnect cables. The cable off the positive side of the pack is warm to the touch after driving the cart, but the interconnecting cables aren’t.

I read the thread by JohnnieB where are he checked the resistance of all his cables and calculated the power loss from even a slight amount of resistance. I did a quick check of mine with all the batteries still hooked up with the probes at the top of the battery posts and found one cable reading almost 1 ohm. I’d say a good cleaning of all connections to start, maybe better cables.

I have looked at the cartsunlimited site with the silver soldered cables.

[camaroluvz28]

The wires coming off battery pack sound like factory wires which are 6 gauge instead of 4, Most of the time if your going to upgrade battery cables you would upgrade those as well but someone may have been on a budget. For best results I would upgrade the rest of your cables to 4 gauge also...

[JohnnieB]

Originally Posted by gwh1bass

..............found one cable reading almost 1 ohm. I’d say a good cleaning of all connections to start, maybe better cables.

I have looked at the cartsunlimited site with the silver soldered cables.

Volts = Amps X Ohms, so 1 Ohm with 200 Amps flowing through it, drops 200V.
Of course the maximum number of Amps that can be pushed through 1 Ohm with a fully charged 36V battery pack is about 38.2A

Looks like some new cables would give your cart a bit more oomph.

[gwh1bass]

I see you have the 2 ga cables in your sig. More is better in this case?

[JohnnieB]

I'm an efficiency junkie.

I've got about 20' of 2Ga cable and a stock (300A) PDS controller so the voltage drop at max is about 0.9V, with 4Ga it would be about 1.5V and with 6Ga it would be 2.4V.
I get a little better acceleration and the cart doesn't slow down quite as much on hills, but a PDS controller limits the max motor RPM, so top speed is the same.

However the max RPM for a Series wound motor is limited by voltage and any voltage loss in the cables reduces voltage at motor.
Half a volt, or so, probably doesn't make much difference a series cart's top speed, but I'd rather have an additional 0.01 MPH than warm cables.