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DOES S
For gas powered carts, the
cables need only be of suf-
ficient size to operate the
starter motor, which is only
for a few seconds at a time.
So that answer is no, the
originally installed cables
are plenty sufficient in size.
For those of us who have
the more plentiful, battery
powered carts, the answer
is somewhat more compli-
cated. The short answer for
us is, yes and no, depending
upon what we expect from
the cart or if modifications to
the motor or controller have
been made.
If the cart is absolutely bone
stock (all original with no up-
grades) and is used primarily
as originally intended around
the local course, the stan-
dard 6 AWG (aka 6 gauge or
#6) cables are perfectly fine.
Wire (cable) size is measured
by a standard called Ameri-
can Wire Gauge or AWG and
relates to the diameter or
cross sectional area of the
copper conductor itself. The
smaller the AWG number,
the larger the diameter, and
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hence, larger current carry-
ing capacity. For example, a
2 AWG cable is larger than a
4 AWG which is larger than a
6 AWG. Most cart manufac-
turers use 6 AWG cables. The
finest cables we have found
so far are made by MaxiLink.
com, which are super flexible
and made for extreme duty
electric vehicle use.
Ok, now for you guys that
want better performance,
we’ll get a little more techni-
cal. The maximum current
that will ever go through
your cables is when the cart
is at rest and you mash the
gas pedal to the floor. At that
point in time, the controller
puts out the max power it is
capable of, and the motor
experiences what is called
“locked rotor” current draw,
which can be hundreds of
amperes. When the motor is
in a stalled state, it requires
tremendous energy to get it
spinning to the rated RPM.
If the motor were to stay in
the stalled state (if there was
some mechanical restraint
that would not allow it to
turn) the high current would
continue to be absorbed by
the motor until it actually
burned up the windings.
Typically though, the motor
begins to spin immediately,
and the current drops down
to 20 or so amperes within a
few milliseconds (on a stock
cart). There are four things
that limit that maximum
current; the resistance of the
internal windings of the mo-
tor, the current capacity of
the battery pack, the control-
ler capacity and the resis-
tance of the battery cables.
The Battery Pack and Motor
windings are pretty much
fixed values. Keep these in
mind because we will come
back to them.
Aftermarket “high torque” or
“high speed” motors installed
to increase the carts perfor-
mance are commonplace
these days. Unfortunately,
that additional performance
requires additional power.
The motor is only there to
convert electrical energy
into kinetic energy (not very
efficiently either). High pow-