Starter Generator blew up--never seen this before

[nickdalzell1]

Got a 2001 Club Car Carryall with the FE 290 in with the ticket just saying 'not running' and nothing more. The battery is a 2021 and tested normally (at rest 12.6V, under load never drops below 10) but starter had evidence of someone hitting it with a hammer so I took off a brush cover--sure enough there weren't nothing left of 'em. So I put on a new Red Hawk starter generator (they're not OEM but we can't get OEM these days and the customers refuse to pay the OEM price).

Checked charging system, OK @ 14.5V, so off I went to road test. I didn't make a mile before it went from running great to BANG! Squeeeeeal! and dead stop. Then solenoid just clicked. Opened the rear bed and discovered the starter had literally exploded. I mean exploded--entire back had blown apart, case and all. None of the brush covers anywhere to be seen, innards all over the engine. Smoke billowing out. I have NEVER in my 15+ years as a golf car mechanic seen anything like this. It was so hot I couldn't even touch it. There was zero warning, ran fine then BANG.

Now I'm nervous. Obviously we took photos and are going for a warranty repair, and I put on another starter and now the voltage when it's running is 20+V which is way too high, so I'm not sure if the regulator was the cause (failed during test drive?) or the result (dead shorted after the starter blew up). I have never ever seen one explode like that. Batteries? sure. Starters? nope.

The car was never turned up--just set to 14 MPH. At first I thought the clutch failed or the engine seized. But it was definitely the starter.

[KartMan154]

Sadly, many aftermarket starters just don't work reliably, often failing unexpectedly.
Try getting an OEM starter, they are about $500 but you get what you pay for.

[nickdalzell1]

We can't. This area might as well be Hooterville since the people mirror exactly the kooks from Green Acres. Customers won't pay OEM prices. We can't even explain to them what 'you get what you pay for' is as a concept--just goes right over their heads. Case in point--they will always buy a rebuilt PowerWise QE (150$) over a DPI or Eagle ($650) every time. They're the ones who probably made everything a service (like subscriptions to things like BMW's heated seats or Apple Arcade). They don't see how that $150 adds up over time--just what they're paying then.

Not like we can get a Made in USA Starter anyway. At best we'd get those NIDEC ones from China just the same, only without brush covers to see inside since they're sealed today.

I already get migraines having to do the Carburetor shuffle, and lately since FSIP has hired idiots the Controller shuffle (no one wants to pay Alltrax prices--so that's another rabbit hole there--DCS controllers blown up from crappy Rural King batteries and them desiring rebuilt and weaker of those as replacements) now it looks like the Starter Shuffle is next. Good grief. If this gets any worse I'm gonna do early retirement.

I mean the carts I see are literally run into the ground. Cheap crap batteries, Amazon parts, rolled over, covered head to toe in mud, governor cables zip tied, and they refuse to pay a bill over $100. Try to build a business on that!

The worst is when the customer tries to repair them themselves. Then we get to earn electronics engineering degrees just to get some Chinesium cart with a Navitas controller upgrade kit running with a totally butchered harness, zero schematics, and no diagram for the replacement parts--just a multimeter and dumb luck.

[KartMan154]

Sad but true. Try a different brand.

[nickdalzell1]

We tried to have them rebuilt but the guy who done that is dead. Before he died his quality was dipping. The Red Hawks are already $250 so that's already above most of our customers' pay grade. The people here are farmers, hunters, and kids. I'm serious. 90% of the literally WORST cars to work on involve children. What kind of irresponsible parent lets some 6 year old drive a golf cart? They always shrug off the incident as well..

"oh, little Johnny ran the cart into my pickup truck! Kids! hehe! Can you fix it?"

IF that had been me growing up I'd have a red back end, be grounded for a month, and have to pay the bill for the wrecked truck's bumper and the wrecked cart out of my allowance or do jobs for the neighbors to earn the money. I'm expecting kids to get killed eventually so the liability issue there scares me a ton.

Does a Made in USA starter even exist?

[Fairtax4me]

Did it happen to say Dynamo on a little silver sticker on the side? I haven't seen those around for a couple years now so I would think the company that made them would have been sued out of existence by now, but never know if there are still a few of them floating around out there.


Hitting it with a hammer is the old timers trick to get a dud starter going. Problem is when it doesn't work the first time people just get a bigger hammer and beat the living snot out of it. I've replaced starters where people had broken the case open and the magnets inside were shattered from being hammered to death. Most of the time a starter is fixable, until someone beats it with a mini sledge "because that's what worked all them times before".

[nickdalzell1]

Yeah all the Red Hawk S/G say Dynamo Generator Motor and numbers after that. We've installed tons of 'em and this one is the only one I know of that blew up like this. IT didn't just shoot the covers off and get fiber everywhere--it literally cracked the case and shot shrapnel eveywhere on the engine.

I'm stressing the point that a customer will NOT buy an OEM one. The one who owned this golf car expected the bill to not exceed $150. Sadly I have no control over the jobs we accept--I'm just the mechanic. I've tried to advise the bosses about this but they won't listen. Neither will customers. They now won't let me talk to customers.

Unfortunately trying to rebuild the OE ones doesn't work well. Either they wear the brushes out super fast, or barely turn after replacement, or the generator otherwise works fine except it won't charge period. This place is a mom and pop operation--we can't turn armatures or do serious disassembly like a pro level shop.

[meimk]

I've lousy results from any rebuilts we've ever tried. If you can get away with just brushes on an o.e. unit that might buy you some time. Otherwise, I've had very reputable electrical specialty shops try and fail. Shops I've used for years on high end automotive - Porsche, Jaguar, BMW - for starters, alternators, window motors convertible top motors. And incidentally we had issues with Red Hawk starters a couple years ago, just had the same issues again recently.

[nickdalzell1]

The main issue is rebuilding them hardly ever works. We got a pile of starter generators that were under water (flood special carts/in a barn exposed to rain) critter damage (mice), burned to a crisp (entire armature fried, smells real good too!), or the most common one lately--the generator part is open. I have no clue what it would take to replace a field coil--I only know we don't have the equipment or the manpower. I'm literally it--THE mechanic. We got customers coming in each day usually bringing in five or so to work on. Right now there's 12 in the shop waiting for parts. So we can't take the time to do hard repair like rebuilding engines, rewinding electric motors, or turning and properly rebuilding starter generators. We always try to send them off to a third party (FSIP has been doing our controller and charger rebuilds).

I know folks here tend to always say rebuilding an OE one is the best way but it never works out. Between the types of damage and having things like the studs snapped off from DIY attempts, it's just not feasible.

I'd love to just slap in Alltrax XCTs into each cart with a fried controller, be able to refuse jobs where cost to repair will exceed value of golf car, or only use OEM parts. But our customers won't have any of that. It only got worse post 2020.

[CP241]

You could do like most dealerships do. If you buy the oem part it comes with a 12 month warranty. If you choose to be cheap and use an aftermarket part, they have to deal with that manufacturer for warranty parts replacement and any labor involved to replace it again if/when it fails due to the part failing, labor charges are on them at shop minimum 1 hour @$100/hr to remove it so they can send it back to the manufacturer for warranty replacement, and another labor charge to reinstall it when it comes back from warranty replacement to the tune of $200 round trip, that ~$400 for the oem starter with a “full” warranty doesn’t sound so bad.

Legally it’s legitimate. You’re not voiding any warranty or refusing to warranty anything. Just telling them up front the aftermarket part itself does have a warranty, but it’s on them to go through that mfr to honor it. And you’re not warranting the labor to replace it unless the labor is what specifically caused the failure.

The dealership I used to work at did that all the time. More often than not they just paid the little extra $ for the oem parts