Overhead/Retractable Charger

[GATORB8]

My cart gets parked on the “car and a half” side of my 2.5 car garage. I’d like to overhead mount the charger to eliminate the current charger cable trip hazard. I have a ~15’ ceiling, but the angle hanging the garage door track would make for a convenient mounting point.

Wondering if anyone has done an overhead mount, preferably retractable, setup, and if there were any cost effective solutions. Initial thought would be repurposing a standard cord reel to replace the charger output cord.

[LatonkaPiranha]

We were throwing out an older small TV wall mount shelf, prior to flat screens. I decided to mount it on the wood that the garage door track is mounted to. I strapped the charger to it the way the TV was meant to be strapped. The cable does not retract, but I made it so the connector can't touch the floor and break.
Works nicely for us.

[morvolts2]

retractable cord reel is nice for it
I have a couple battery tenders for my seldom used cars on cord reels.
Mount the end high enough so its not in the way when retracted.

[KRAZYMATT]

Get on board mounted charger (summit 2) then just attach an off the shelf retractable reel atleast 14 awg.

[CartsRFun]

Hey gator88

Thinking that the dc cablr from charger to cart should not exceed a certain length....But i don't know what that might be..

Best wishes
happy cartin'

[ThreeCW]

This subject was discussed earlier in the thread below.
https://www.buggiesgonewild.com/showthread.php?t=168033
The general consensus was that it may not be a good idea to use a standard duty retractable reel due to heat generation in the enclosed reel. If you want to go this way, you would want to use a heavy duty retractable reel as suggested by the last poster of the above linked thread. I’m not sure if this passes your “cost effective solution” criteria.

[Bwebb1986]

I made this hanging mount today. It could easily be retractable with a bungee cord and an Eye hook be hind it. Pretty cheap too.

[Fairtax4me]

Mount it on the wall and hang the cord from a hook or use a bungee or elastic strap to keep it pulled up off the floor.

You can’t use a reel for the DC side. The amperage is too high even for an 8awg reel. With DC the longer the cord the more drop you have in voltage (due to resistance of the cord) which leads to incorrect and incomplete charging. It also causes heat build-up in the cord which can cause problems if the cord is coiled up and enclosed in a reel housing. Keeping the cord suspended by a separate reel with a string or rope of some sort could work. You would have to hang the charger from a mount of some sort. Maximum cord length for most 15A chargers is around 12 feet.