Hillbilly Compact Light / lite Golf Trolley going nowhere (motor needs new brushes)

A frustrated customer brought this ‘stationary’ mobile golf trolley in to the workshop recently.  He’d replaced the control unit along with the hand controller.  The battery was also new, but the trolley wouldn’t respond to the controls.

A systematic test of the wiring revealed no problems and power was getting to the motor OK.  However, with the unit switched on, every now and then, the motor would make a noise, a faint hum.

This indicated that the motor, a Lemac 65178-101, was trying to do something.  A few searches online revealed that the Hillbilly Compact is no longer made and parts, including the motor, are hard to obtain for reasonable money, this is a shame as the unit is only just over 10 years old.

The customer likes this particular model due to its lightweight and compact folding ability.  New ones are several hundred pounds and usually heavier.

Since the rest of this trolley is serviceable, it seemed sensible to have a go at a repair.  With the motor removed, the cause of the fault became clear.  The commutator was heavily blackened and scored and one of the brushes had burned away, probably due to the heavy weight the trolley had lugged around a golf course.

Being realistic about spend on parts, I thought it would be a good idea to order some replacement brushes from Amazon.  These brushes will come from Hong Kong via Sourcingmap (an excellent source of hard to get parts) and I will let you all know how I get on with the repair.  The motor’s back-plate is available online for just over £15 plus P&P, but I like to repair the problem, rather than waste components that still work.

More to come… I expect you can’t wait.

LemacFixItWorkshop, Worthing Aug’17 Model 65178-101 motor

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, Aug’17 Hillbilly Compact Golf Trolley

One the new brushes are fitted and the commutator cleaned, I hope the motor will spin once again.

20/08/17

The brushes arrived and fitted perfectly.  Time will tell if the brush material stands up to the tough punishment of lugging golf clubs across a green, but for £2.41, the repair was worth a try.  See video.

Here are a few photos of the motor refitted to the golf trolley.

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, Aug’17, Back of golf Hillbilly golftrolley

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, Aug’17, front of Hillbilly golf trolley

FixItWorkshop, Worthing, Aug’17, Hillbilly, (refitted) motor in situ

Cost of a replacement golf trolley is circa £300+; The cost of the parts to repair this one; £2.41.

04/09/17

Well after some ‘light use’ the owner of the golf trolley contacted me to report that it had failed again, my heart sank!  After a few hundred yards, the trolley came to a halt, which caused some amusement on the fairway…

After testing all the wiring again, I suspected the motor once more.  After removing the motor, I saw that one of the brushes had stuck to the carrier, hmm, interesting.  It seemed that the brushes I’d fitted had run ‘hot’ and started to deteriorate prematurely, which was a shame.  When I ordered these to ‘fit’ this motor, there was always a risk that they wouldn’t last as long, since I didn’t know the exact specification for the motor- I took an educated guess, which turned out to be wrong!

I looked online again and discovered another set of brushes available for this Lemac motor, from http://www.lambeggolfshop.com, for a very reasonable £8.48, including delivery within 48 hours. I didn’t find these brushes the first time, so I must have used different search criteria, this time.

The motor now spins freely and it’s fitted back to the trolley and I hope this time, it makes a round to the 19th hole!

Author: fixitworkshop.co.uk

Hi, my name's Matt and I'm on a mission to save everyday items from the bin. Many things are repairable, but we've seemingly fallen out of love with mending things. I aim to fix that by publishing each repair I carry out in the hope that others will be inspired to repair their things and keep them for longer. View all posts by fixitworkshop.co.uk