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Old 11-12-2018, 11:44 AM   #1
DFW Rusty
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Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Texas
Posts: 284
Default My 36V TXT build.

I wont bore y'all with a long back story, so I'll give y'all the short. I have been wanting a golf cart for a while. I need/want one for around our property, we have 15 acres of woods we bought last year, and utv's are just a little to wide for most of the trails, I have a honda rancher, but I want something my girls can ride with me on and has more utility. I finally found a good price on a 2001 36V that runs, and came with a charger. I did a short test drive around the guys yard and it seemed decently peppy so I bought it. I didn't want to drop $8k on a new fancy one yet, because I have plans to buy a Roxor next year.

I was going to put a pic of the bare bones golf cart here, but I can't post pics for 7 days.

I got it home and I loaded up my 3 daughters and went to take it around the neighborhood and it barely made it around my block (maybe 1/4 mile trip). I was super disappointed. I inspected the batteries, they are 2014 and 4 of the cells were bone dry. Did some home work and put distilled water in them. This increased my range by double, I could do 2 trips around my neighborhood. I then talked to a good friend of mine that has a 4x4 club car hunting buggy, he said he does the battery medic on his batteries about once a year. I ordered it and put it in and trickle charged each battery individually and it now does about 2 miles . After about the first mile though it gets very sluggish. I am pretty certain that the batteries are in need of replacing. I know there is a little more doctoring I can do to the batteries, such as; clean the terminals, but being 2014 they are at the end of their life anyways.


Upon bringing the golf cart home I ordered a back seat. I did some home work and ordered one with aluminum diamond plate bottom and has the hoop support that holds the seat when laid down for extra strength. I will say this, installing the back seat is kind of a chore and requires patience for when not everything lines up perfectly.


Last Monday I decided to go ahead and order a lift kit and tires. I bounced around a bunch of lifts and decided to do the 6" drop arm. I ordered the freedom offroad 6" drop lift that comes with a new tie rod. It was the bang for the buck. I also ordered a set of 22"x11"x10" all terrains on black steel wheels. I woke up too late to go hunting Saturday and decided to go ahead and put the lift and tires on. I'll tell you what, that is an easy task. Took all of about 3 hours from start to finish. Hardest part was finding the safest spot for the jack stands on the back. The only technical part was drilling the passenger knuckle for the steering riser and even that was pretty easy. The cart took on a whole new look (reference my avatar since I can't post pics yet).


During the lift installation I did notice that my back shocks are toast mainly the driver side. There is very little dampening left in them. So a set of new shocks is coming in the near future. I also noticed that the bushings on the rear springs are virtually gone, so I will be ordering those soon as well.


So Saturday after I installed the lift I took my middle child with me to go check deer feeders out at my dad's place 200+ acres in the golf cart. It did really good getting around, first thing you do going to the back is drop in a muddy creek bed and it tanked right through it. However the batteries didn't last very long (maybe 45 min worth of driving at best). I have a really cut pic of my daughter standing on the back trying to feed cows I was going to post, but can't yet.


To conclude my first post on this build. I am so far happy with the golf cart. I need batteries and I am trying to do homework on that right now, but it's almost overwhelming the amount of info. I would like to be cost careful, but I don't want to buy junk.


Tonight I am going to do a little looking at the motor and controller, I am hoping it's a PDS so I can buy the freedom chip, but that is probably about it for now.


I am going to order some lights for it, Amazon has a really nice 22" green led spot light bar that I want to get for the front. I am going to get that and some 4" pods and mount them on it and then install a 12v battery and run all of that on a stand alone system so I don't have to buy a inverter.


My question to the forum is this; What is considered a good run time for a 36v golf cart? lifted or not, I have no idea. The company I work for has a 48v TXT that is brand new, it goes all day on a single charge (could probably go longer, but it gets charged every night), can I expect close to that?
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