97 cc 36v vglide conversion

[dukgetr]

Extreme newbie here. Have a 97 CC 36V. I haul a 10 ft aluminum jon boat approx 1 mile round trip on a garden wagon to several ponds ner my home and have recently had some electrical trouble. The 4th contact on my vglide assembly keeps getting burnt up. Resistor coils look original and pretty corroded. I intend to convert all the wiring to 4 ga, but having trouble finding a thread that addresses converting to a controller type setup while avoiding a 48v conversion. Would like to loose the vglide and the coils and keep the 36v setup because batts are fairly new. Is this possible? Have $500-$600 to spend and would just like to get this thing set up to haul a little more payload. Sorry for the long winded explanation, but any help is greatly appreciated.