How to Install a DC Convertor

Ryan Fenters is the founder of the popular YouTube Channel called Fentertainment. Ryan creates DIY videos of, in his own words… “dedicated to making, painting, building, modifying and fixing things…”

His golf-cart-related DIY videos are very informative and we thought it would be a good idea to transcribe them for you.

This is the fourth video in a four-part series where Ryan transforms a 2014 Club Car Precedent. Ryan shows us step-bystep how to install a 48 to 12 volt DC convertor.

Ryan Fenters: Previously on the Fentertainment channel, we took the motor out of our club car precedent. We sent it off to plumb quick and they did the bandit upgrade before we reinstalled it. The golf cart went from 12 miles per hour stock to 23 miles per hour.

The next video in this series, with the help from www.golfcarttiresupply.com we added an all sports six-inch lift-kit to the golf cart and we added some 14-inch wheels with 23-inch all-terrain tires. That took our speed from 23 mph to 27 mph. After the lift and tires, we then added a Navitas TSX 3.0 DC torque controller. It gave us 3 mph more speed and it gave us a lot more torque while providing security.

Today we're going to be installing a 48 to 12 volt DC converter on our 2014 Club Car Precedent. You can use this in 48-volt applications or 36-volt applications, and this will give you a 30 amp output range off of this converter.

Let’s get started. You have five wires on the harness and they're all different colors and they all have different functions

which we’ll go over. The yellow wire is going to hook directly to your batteries pack voltage. This is going to be the input voltage for your DC converter. The black wire is going to be the main ground for the converter and the accessories which we’ll use in two ways. We're going to hook this to the accessories and we're also going to hook this to the main negative of the battery pack.

The green wire is going to be the switch wire. What I mean by that is you're going to hook this up to the main on and off switch on the golf cart that turns the golf cart on and off. It will tell the converter to turn on and off just like an automobile. The red wire is going to be the main accessory wire and we’ll use this to hook up all the accessories to 12 volts.

If you're running a car stereo in your golf cart, you’ll notice that it has two power wires, normally a red and yellow wire. This is going to be your remote wire that keeps memory in your car stereo for the clock and radio stations.

We are now underneath the front of the golf cart and you can see the shock, the upper control arm and the frame of the golf cart.

There is a metal bar that runs through your frame and there is a plate in front. The converter fits perfectly there, but we're not going to be able to use ordinary screws to mount it. We’ll run the wires towards the passenger side. I’ll mount it with some 24-inch zip ties. Once we have the controller mounted here on the passenger side, there's access to the dash. We can run the wire straight up and all the wires will be free and clear of any moving parts. To give you a better angle, I'm underneath the front end of the golf cart and I’ll run a zip tie-up. There's an opening in the back and we’re pushing it through. There's also an opening at the bottom. These wire ties are heavy-duty, 24-inch long wire ties.

One is plenty, but I'm going to do two for security.

The controller is mounted and it's not moving. Over the converter we have an access panel right here in the dash and we can run our wires directly into there. They’ll be nice and hidden.

Next we're going to be making all of our work connections behind the dash piece. We're going to use a T30 and a T15 for the top screw. Once you have the three screws removed, you can now remove this dash cover.

There is a white plug from the 48 to 12-volt converter. We've got matching wires for everything yellow and black. Yellow is the power input and black is the ground. We're going to attach these to the positive and negative of the battery and once we have the ring terminals on the wires itself we can go ahead and route them through the bottom of the golf cart. This is going to go out the same hole that the plug is going to

come in from the converter.

Once we've ran the power and ground wire from our DC converter here, I like to place those wires on top of the battery cables. I want to make sure that the battery cables get as much amperage as possible so I connect those to the battery first. Since the wire is already run, I can go ahead and pull the slack out and we can go ahead and cut these wires and give us enough room to mount to the harness.

Next we're going to take the yellow part of the harness and we're going to attach it to the yellow part of the main power wire with butt connectors. Since the ground wire is used for input and an output, I've got some four-way connectors and will crimp it down. Do the same thing with the harness cable.

The reason we used a four-way crimp connector on the ground is to act as a distribution block. Since I'm not going to be running any type of radios to keep any type of memory I'm going to take this blue wire and put a single butt connector on it and cap it off. The golf cart is in the run position and I have the key turned to off.

Take the negative lead of your battery and put it on your battery pack and put the positive lead on your wires. When the golf cart is turned off, my green wire has power, my blue wire doesn't. When we turn the key switch to the on position, you should have power on both sides. With the Club Car Precedent we're going to attach the green wire to the blue wire of the switch. You put the black tap on the wire that we want to tap on to and snap into place.

We take the green wire and run it into the back of it all the way into it and close the tap with pair of pliers. Make sure the metal bar inside the tap goes all the way through so we can cover the tap, close it into place and our green wire is installed. In order to run my accessories from my red wire, I purchased a five-gang fuse panel.

The power wire has jumped into each leg of the fuse panel itself. However, there is no fuses on this side. Once we apply power, these terminals will be dead until we apply a fuse to the inside of the fuse block. I've decided to mount this beside the key switch on the backside. There is a notch and it would fits right in. I'm going to use some double-sided tape. We'll run this power wire and connect it and then every time we add an accessory to the golf cart, we add a fuse and we connect the power wire and connect the ground wire to the distribution block.

Once you have everything in place, you can now connect your power wire to the power wire of the fuse panel. Use wire ties as an option. You don't have to but I just think it looks much cleaner tying the wires together behind the dash. Once everything is installed, you're going to see a small pop and that's perfectly normal.

Plug everything in and wire tie all of it to make it secure. When the golf cart is in the on position, none of these terminals will have power. Connect the ground to the ground block and connect the power to the power block. On this side, as you can see, we don't have any power but if we touch it to this side, we have 12 point so many volts. This is letting us know the converter is working. If we turn the switch key off, we have zero volts from the converter.

The only way you're going to see voltage on this side of the key switch, is if we add a fuse to the fuse holder. Now that we have the fuse in the fuse holder not only do we have power in front of the fuse, we have power on the backside of the fuse as well. None of these back here will have any power because there's no fuses but since this one has a fuse, it has power. Once you have everything buttoned up, we're heading back to

install the panel. We'll only remove the panel to add fuses and accessories down the road.

We are now finished and the DC converter is now installed. The next step is we just need to add some lights and some bazooka tubes and I cannot wait to do those videos. If you're not subscribed to the Fentertainment channel, I ask that you do so and hit the bell notification and share this video with a friend. Until next time guys, I'm Ryan Fenters and we'll see you later. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=P-6Q-0hFB8Y