why is my 85 club car electric so darn slow?

[jasondpals]

its an 85 club car. Resister cart i believe. 36 volts. We got it from a lady that said it had to batteries but i'm not so sure now. It looks like someone replaced quite a few of the wires with flimsy ones. It goes good for a while but isn't fast up hills and has a slow top speed. Anything that i can do (wires, grease, batteries,) or any other novice/intermediate changes i can make that would probably make this run better? Also, it seems the charger likes to click off prematurely. if you wiggle the plug it starts buzzing again for a good while.
:cr y:

[butterface]

First thing is to look up in the stickies for the wiring diagram and check all connections. Make sure the battery and motor cables are at least 6 ga (stock size). Then check the voltage and status of the batteries. The batteries may be tired and need replacing.

But, if the batteries are good you can upgrade the cables to 4 ga, but you won't see a big improvement in performance until you do some major modifications to the resistor setup or change from 36 to 48 volt. Do a search on here for v-glide to controller upgrade and you should get more information than you will probably want to read in one day.

Good luck.

[scottyb]

Your '85 is a 5 solenoid cart. One is the master and the other 4 are speeds or gears 1-4. Put the cart on jack stands and remove the seat bottom. Press the gas and count the clicks from 0 - WOT. you should hear 5... if not you could be missing a gear? But these carts were not speedsters or overly powerful uphill when new. Warning....do not run WOT for more than a few seconds while jacked up . Serious danger to operator and motor can occure.

[gornoman]

jasondpals, I just picked up one of these carts ('85, 5 solenoid resistor cart) and agree it's no speed/torque demon. I will be replacing all the wiring soon just to make it safe/reliable, but I don't expect it to ever be a "puller". They are slow. I won't be putting a rear seat on this one. I can't imagine it climbing some of the hills in our campground with 4 adults onboard! However, it rides great, and flies downhill!