We have a fleet of Club Car CarryAll vehicles. They’ve been remarkable over the years. This is my second fleet, the first one lasted 12 years. With this group I seem to be adjusting brakes more but the starters have been holding up better. Although now, at 6 years, I’ve been hearing some really horrible noises from several. Going through the steps it turns out to be starter/generator bearings. So now I’m going through a few of those and since I just put my last new starter on, I ordered one for stock along with bearing sets for a few others.

WOW… Not what I expected. The usual starter is made in Korea and just about a work of art. The new one came from China and still has the sanding marks on the castings. It is bi-directional which means you no longer need one for CarryAll 1′s and another for 2′s.. and at first I thought, They’re really building these inexpensively

Thinking about it later in the day though, this isn’t about China. It’s about companies spec’ing out components and picking the one that’s “just good enough”. For Club Car, this is a real decline in appearance quality. Whether the internals hold up as well as the previous version remains to be seen.