Outer Cylindrical Metal Frame: The frame, or housing, has the Field Coil & Poles attached to the inside of it. It helps in creating a more powerful magnetic field and helps keep the golf cart motor cool.

Field Coil: A long length of wire coiled around several metal cores (poles) that are evenly spaced around the inside surface of the Frame. There are different types of fields and different ways of applying the battery current to the field.

Armature: The armature has many wires wrapped around a metal core and these wires begin and end in a series of copper bars arranged around one end of the Armature. It is supported on each end by ball bearings that mount in the Motor End Caps or in the differential. The armature spins freely inside the frame and field coil and this spinning drives the front or rear wheels. Battery current is applied to the golf cart motor and this causes the Motor Armature to spin very forcefully within the Motor Field. This rotary motion is transferred to the rear wheels by way of the differential.

Types of Golf Cart Motors

Cart motors come in a wide variety of designs but the 3 most common to golf carts are:

Series Wound Golf Cart Motor: This type of motor is very common in the golf cart markets today. It is characterized by thick armature and field windings. The Field Coil (or Winding) and Armature are connected in Series. The same amount of battery current runs through the Field and then through the Armature, or vice versa depending on direction of desired armature rotation.

Shunt Wound Golf Cart Motor: This has two different types of Field Windings, within the same motor frame. One field winding is made of thicker wire that produces fewer coils, like a series field, while the other field winding is made of a finer wire, which allows for many more coils in the same amount of space.

Separately Excited Field & Armature Golf Cart Motor: This is an advanced motor design that allows for precise control of the magnetic interaction between the spinning Armature and the fixed Field. The system requires a solid state regen controller coupled to the motor. The regen controller sends different currents to the Armature, or to the Field winding, depending on the programs, built into the controller when it is designed. These different currents induce different magnetic fields in the Armature and the Field that cause the motor to behave in different ways depending on pedal position and motor speed. These days Permanent Magnet motors are used in golf cars. Recent advances have made them a viable alternative to traditional series wound and the more modern separately excited motors. Both of these motors require battery current to create the magnet field crucial to getting the motor armature to spin.

The Permanent Magnet motor saves this current because the magnets themselves provide a constant magnetic field. It is almost 50% smaller, much lighter (22.3 lbs vs 42.5 lbs for the separately excited motor), uses less copper in the windings and less steel in the frame. The motor is also 15% more efficient than series wound motors when climbing hills. Additionally, the brushes can be serviced without disassembling the motor and it provides high torque at both low and high speeds.