Best golf cart light kits: LED kits by make, with prices

Buy the LED golf cart light kit made for your cart’s body year, and if the cart is electric, buy the voltage reducer with it. That is the whole answer for most owners. A Precedent, a TXT, an RXV or a Drive has headlight pockets molded into the front cowl, and a model-specific kit from RHOX, Madjax, GTW or Buggies Unlimited drops into them in an afternoon. A DS or a cart nobody makes a kit for gets a bar kit.

This page covers the lighting side of the lights and street-legal hub. Lights alone do not make a cart legal on a road; the street-legal guide lists the rest, and the turn signal page covers adding signals to a cart that already has lights.

Halogen or LED

LED, unless you are matching a kit you already have. A halogen headlamp pulls about 55 watts; the LED lamps in current kits pull 10 to 15 and are brighter at the road. On a 48V electric cart running two headlamps and two taillamps for an evening, the halogen set takes a noticeable bite out of range and the LED set does not.

LEDs also last longer than the cart will. Halogen bulbs are consumable, and the sealed-beam units some older kits used are getting hard to find. The price gap that used to justify halogen has closed to 20 or 30 dollars a kit.

Basic or deluxe

A basic kit is headlights, taillights, a harness and a switch. It makes the cart visible after dark on a course path or in a neighborhood that allows carts. Prices run about 120 to 280 dollars for a model-specific kit.

A deluxe kit adds front and rear turn signals, a flasher relay, a column switch with a horn button, a horn and a brake-light switch, usually with the voltage reducer in the box. That is the lamp list most street-legal ordinances and the federal LSV rule ask for. Prices run about 220 to 420 dollars.

Buy deluxe if there is any chance you will drive on a public street. Buy basic if the cart lives on the course or a private community, or if you want to spread the cost; most brands sell an upgrade kit that adds the signal parts to their own basic kit later.

The 12V question on 36V and 48V carts

Every light kit runs on 12 volts. A gas cart has a 12V starter battery, so the kit wires to it and that is the end of it. An electric cart has a 36V or 48V pack and no 12V anywhere, so you need to make some.

There are two ways. The cheap way taps one 12V battery, or two 6V batteries in series, out of the pack. It works, and plenty of carts run that way, but those batteries do extra duty and drift low. The pack charger sees the total and cannot fix the imbalance, and the tapped batteries age first. The right way is a voltage reducer, a DC to DC converter that takes the full pack voltage and puts out 12V. Every battery discharges evenly and the reducer is a 30 to 70 dollar part.

A lithium cart has no choice. A single pack has no 12V point to tap, so the reducer is required. The lithium guide covers why the accessory tap has to move when the pack changes.

Size the reducer for what comes next, not just the lights. A light kit draws under 10 amps; a sound bar, fan and phone charger together might add 15. A 30A reducer covers all of it and costs a few dollars more than a 10A unit.

Fit: kits are split by body year

Every make changed its front cowl at least once, and the headlight pockets changed with it. The kit listings are split at those years, and the wrong one does not fit.

Cart	Body years the kits are split at	Note
Club Car DS	1982 to 1992, 1993 to 2013	Flat cowl, bar-style headlights
Club Car Precedent	2004 and later; some kits split at 2008.5	Molded pockets; Onward and Tempo use the Precedent cowl
EZGO TXT	1996 to 2013, 2014 and later	New cowl in 2014; Medalist uses the early kit
EZGO RXV	2008 to 2015, 2016 and later	Front end revised in 2016
Yamaha Drive / Drive2	2007 to 2016, 2017 and later	Pockets changed with the Drive2

If you are not certain of the year, the serial plate tells you, and the fitment pages for Club Car, EZGO and Yamaha show where to find it. The fitment finder will narrow it from make and year.

Which kit for your cart

Cart	Pick	Reducer needed
Club Car Precedent, Onward, Tempo	RHOX Precedent kit	Yes, 48V input
Club Car DS 1993 to 2013	GTW DS kit	Yes; 36V input to 1994, 48V from 1995
EZGO TXT 1996 to 2013	Madjax TXT kit	Yes; 36V input to 2009, 48V from 2010
EZGO RXV	RHOX RXV kit	Yes, 48V input
Yamaha Drive, Drive2	GTW Drive kit (match the year)	Yes on electric; no on gas
Anything else, or a work cart	10L0L universal kit	Only if the kit is 12V input

Install: two to three hours

Disconnect the pack or pull the main fuse before you start. Set the headlights in the pockets and screw the bezels down. Mount the taillights in the rear body. Run the harness along the frame rail, under the floor, to the dash, with zip ties every foot or so and away from the brake linkage and the controller.

Mount the reducer on the frame under the seat, wire its input across the full pack (most negative to most positive), and its output to the kit’s power lead through the included fuse. Fit the switch in the dash blank, connect, and reconnect the pack. Check both headlights and both taillights before you put the seat back.

The deluxe kits add the column switch, the flasher, the brake-light switch at the pedal and the horn, which is where the extra two hours go. Take a photo of the harness before you tuck it away; you will want it when you add a stereo.

If you are going all the way to street legal

Lights are about a third of the job. The street-legal kits page compares the complete packages, the mirror guide covers what the rules generally ask for, and the LSV explainer is for owners deciding whether to go the whole way to a titled vehicle.