Bad Brakes - Need Advise

[Hunter450]

Long story short. I'm going through a series of runs to break my new battery pack in. It's time consuming because my neighborhood is hilly and the regen setting is extending the run times so with the XCT, I adjusted the regen to 0% to not put voltage back in the pack on downhill coasting and help reduce the run times. Well, my brakes suck and I need to go into the system but as a general rule, I left brake work on autos to the experts but I think I can handle this.

My question is : there are leading and trailing pads in the drum and from what I gather the leading shoe goes towards the rear of cart and the trailing shoe goes towards the front of the cart on the backing plate on a factory cart. Is that correct?

My cart has the mod where the backing plates where swapped side to side and rotated so the brake cable connection is at the top of the backing plate for better ground clearance. If the above assumption is correct, the pads would now be upside down and locations switched forward and rear where they mount to the backing plate.

Any tips or tricks working with these brakes are welcomed. Thanks in advance.

[CCNorth]

Have you seen this older sticky by David Hicks? I think it will help you. It seems that the general advice is to leave the brakes on the plate, swap to opposite side and turn upside down.
BTW, love your cart. Mine is for hunting too, but not as nice as yours.

https://www.buggiesgonewild.com/show...g+brake+plates

[Hunter450]

Originally Posted by CCNorth

Have you seen this older sticky by David Hicks? I think it will help you. It seems that the general advice is to leave the brakes on the plate, swap to opposite side and turn upside down.
BTW, love your cart. Mine is for hunting too, but not as nice as yours.

https://www.buggiesgonewild.com/show...g+brake+plates

As a matter of fact I have seen that thread and I'm sure what you described is how they were flipped and Thanks for the compliment. It's been fun building it. I'm only a couple of hours from David and his fingerprints are all over my cart. I didn't realize how bad the brakes were until I turned down the regen. Other than the brake flip which was done by David, I have ignored them. I'm probably well overdue for new brake shoes so I'll be contacting David for some parts. I have an annoying "yelp squeal" from the brakes just as the cart comes to a stop and for hunting, it's terribly loud so I need to get that gone.

BTW: I just did little wiring and switch with Sergio's help and I don't have that loud solenoid click. Something all hunters with CC should do.

[Sergio]

The term "Leading" refers to the shoe that moves in the same direction as the wheel rotation (when going forward) and "trailing" to the shoe that moves against the wheel rotation.

Since the stock Club Car expands the shoes from the bottom and pivots at the top, when the shoes move out at the bottom the one on the back is the one moving in the same direction as the wheel (Leading Shoe).

When You change them to the other side You also change put them upside down so the piston now expands from the top and the shoes continue to work on the same direction as OEM.

[Hunter450]

Makes sense Sergio, if the backing plate and cluster were just switched from one side to the other, the shoe orientation would be wrong. With rotating the backing plate 180 degrees, the shoe orientation is correct just upside down.