Getting a 2001 DS to 20MPH

[99hawk409]

Hi! I have a 2001 club car DS stock except for body, back seat and aftermarket STOCK size wheels. I don't want to lift it but i DO want to get it at least up to the speed limit in my development (20mph). We have a decent amount of hills.

I don't hear much talk about high speed gears. They seem like an easy way to get the speed i'm looking for but i have a feeling pulling some of the hills especially with 4 people on the cart would be a little rough.

I was thinking a fairly straightforward upgrade would be an FE350 and gears?

I just can't find any FE350s for sale!

Thoughts??

Thanks for any input!

[CP241]

A 10 cent zip tie will get a stock cart up to 19-20mph as long as the clutches and belt are in good working condition.

FE350 will provide more torque/power but not necessarily more speed. Speed is a function of gear ratio and engine speed. Larger tires increases speed. Lower gear ratio (speed gear) changes speed. Faster engine RPM changes speed. Bigger engine turns bigger tires better but since a FE350 spins the same RPM as a 290 there’s really no speed increase there. But a FE350 with speed gears would probably be high 20’s mph range. But... depending on how big the hills are may still not fare very well on hills since the lower gear ratio can kill torque.

[Fairtax4me]

For hills, power spring in the secondary clutch, and a heavy duty or extreme duty drive belt.
Check with Bruce at Cart Parts plus, they sell all the parts for the torque upgrade. They also sell high speed gears if you want to go that route, but it won’t like those on the hills.

People don’t sell 350s because they seem to think they have so much more power. 2hp more isn’t a huge difference, but the changes they made to the internals to get that extra 2hp make it unreliable and far more likely to blow up and spit chunks out of the side.
You can do some simple power upgrades to the stock 290 and get good performance without the reliability issues.

[99hawk409]

Man, I would think getting up to 20 on stock size tires would have it screaming. I like the idea of lower RPM with the speed gears but i know i'll be possibly hating life if i have a ton of people on the cart. The hills are paved but we do have a decent amount of them. I think i'll try a few simple mods and gears and see where that gets me. If the hills are killing me then maybe i'll need to go with whatever big block i can get that won't require me to lift the cart.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

BobZ