How to Lift a Golf Cart without a Kit

Today you’ll learn how to lift a golf cart without a kit. Whether you want to save money, you want to personalize your cart, or you want to demonstrate your mechanical skills, lifting the cart without the help of a kit shouldn’t be difficult if you have the right lead.

Lifting your golf cart isn’t something you’ll do often. But it’s important to know how to go about it in the case where you want to fine-tune it for better performance in and beyond a golf course.

Golf cart owners lift their units for many personal reasons. For example, you might want to fine-tune it for a more personalized look, to increase its value, or to give it a new height that makes it easy to drive off-road.

Whatever your reasons are, lifting a golf cart without a kit can be a super fun once in a lifetime project.

How to Lift a Golf Cart without a Kit (Reasons Why)

There are reasons why a golfer may want to lift their golf cart above its current height. Some reasons are more practical while others are personal preferences that vary from one person to another.

Related: Pros and cons of lifting a golf cart

At the end of the day, you may want to lift a golf cart without a kit because:   

1. You Want to Boost Your Cart’s Chassis Strength

Do you know that lifting your golf cart without a kit can go a long way to strengthen its chassis? You do get quite a great degree of flexibility so that you can add supporting elements, like steel bars, which may not be possible if you use a kit.

2. You Want to Increase Your Cart’s Look and Feel

A lift kit can be a great investment, but it can only do so much to make your golf cart stand out from the crowd. When you want to achieve a specific effect with your style, the kit may not be enough to get you the kind of personalization that you wish to achieve.

Using an option other than a pre-fabricated kit allows you to overcome many limitations and make the lifting process much easier. 

Read: How much gas does a golf cart use?

3. You Want to Save Money

If you feel like a golf cart lift is an expensive investment, there are alternative options that you can use to raise the cart and save money. It’s not just the buying price that’s a concern here.

The installation of the kit itself requires money and you may even need to hire a professional to help if you don’t have the necessary technical skills.

By not investing in a kit and opting for alternatives instead, you save yourself the cost of buying the kit. Not to mention you don’t have to worry about hiring a professional to do the work for you.

4. You Prefer Other DIY Approaches

Using a kit to lift a golf cart isn’t cast in stone. You can use other options. So if you ever feel like you need to challenge yourself to see if you have some mechanical skills, you should consider challenging yourself to lift the golf cart without a kit.

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How Do You Lift a Golf Cart Without a Kit?

Lifting a golf cart without a kit isn’t something everyone can do.  If anything, you need to have real mechanical skills to pull this off in the shortest time possible.

It doesn’t exactly mean that you need to have years of experience in the automotive space. There are many golf cart owners who’ve had theirs lifted through DIY approach and everything turned out fine for them.

So if you have some experience dealing with any kind of a vehicle and you can follow a do-it-yourself guide to a tee, lifting your golf cart without a kit shouldn’t be difficult at all. 

The following a step-by-step guide that you can use to lift the cart without ever having to use an expensive kit:

Step #1: Take Off the Wheels and Axles

Use a torque wrench to unfasten the lug nuts of the tires so that the wheels are easy to take off.

Carefully take off the axle, making sure you follow the mechanical procedure you would when removing the same component from your car

Step #2: Install support Plates, Springs, A-Arms, and Shocks 

With the wheels and axle out of the way, install the support plates to the front and rear part of the cart. These will give the cart a boost in terms of additional support.

Add new A-Arms, springs, and shocks. Together, these components not only increase the robustness of your golf cart but also boost the overall support of the unit. 

Step #3: Installing New Axles

You’ll definitely need to install axles that are far much better than what the cart has at present. Consider investing in and installing longer ones to you’re A-Arms for better performance.

This part can be a little tricky to pull off the right way, so you don’t want to rush to get this done. The secret really is to make sure you balance the front and rear of the cart. That way you can be sure that it will run smoothly as you drive.

Step #4: Get the Angle Adjustments Right

There’s a high chance that the caster and camber of your golf cart will change after you make the above changes to give it a lift. And this can be detrimental to the overall performance of your car.

More often than not, a shift of these two components will cause improper steering if left unadjusted. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem you can’t handle. All you have to do is to tweak the angles of these components, making sure you center the angles.

As you can see, lifting a golf cart without a kit isn’t as easy as driving the cart around a golf course. But the procedure above should not be difficult to pull off if you have some mechanical skills and have worked with golf carts or some other type of automotive before.

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Last Updated on July 13, 2024 by Tom Fiore