New bike kit motor problem

[kosta]

I recently bought my third kit for my mountian bike, and the front motor does not work properly.  I checked all of the components with another bike and it is positivily the motor. When I try to accelerate, the notor makes a growling sound and it makes a jerky forward motion only reaching 5 mph with nobody on the bike. I tried e-mailing Golden Motors and calling them with no responses.  I spoke with Raul at GM perfect team in California and he mentioned that it could be the speed sensor in the motor.  I have left messages at GM Perfect team and nobody called me back.  If any one has a suggestion that could help me, and point me in the right direction to replacing the motor, or if any one knows how to repair it.  I can repair any thing electric granted I have the part to replace it with. 
                                      Any help would be great. Thank you, Kosta

[mustangman]

 Did you buy the kit through Raul at PerfecTeam or sales@golenmotor.com? If by chance you bought directly from Raul, He is resonsible for making it good. Otherwise you will have to contact philip at goldenmotor.com. Myelectricbike or one of the other members can possibly help you troubleshoot and solve your problem.

[myelectricbike]

The topic and solution have been well covered in the forum and one of our members has even written an instructable to take you through the repair. You may want to enter the following keywords under the general discussion heading to brush up on everything here before heading over there: "sensor" "repair" "Hall" etc.

[mustangman]

...But why should he replace the sensors when the motor is still under warranty. For goodness sake he stated it was new in box and was DOA upon opening the box. 

[myelectricbike]

Cost of return shipping, glad you asked.

Returning a DOA ebike kit for replacement is a different story than returning a DOA motherboard combo, due to the weight of the components. If you can figure out which component is bad, however, you may be able to save yourself from paying the cost of return shipping for the whole kit. On top of knowing what is wrong, if you can do the repair yourself for less than the cost of return shipping of the component then you may be able to save even more. 

Golden has in the past waived returning DOA components in the interest of customer satisfaction but Golden, like many other companies, may not be able to do this in the future and charge a low up-front price, or at least not the second or third time a component fails.   

Even still you have to know which component is defective to ask for a replacement, whether you are required to return it or not, and the way to do this is by using test procedures and equipment and by following a troubleshooting chart. Hence, my reason for developing a plug 'n play sensor tester and for having other ebike component test equipment and procedures in the works.) 

To help chart trouble Golden Tech Support has started a pole at Design, repair and/or quality issues. Feel free to add your own input and comments so that everyone can benefit from being able to figure out what is wrong and elect to do the repair themselves and save on the cost of return shipping in the event their kit arrives DOA, or in case something else goes wrong later on down the road. 

[kosta]

I have checked all posibale solutions to getting my bike on the road and noyhing has worked.  Also, I have been completly ignored by sales@GoldenMotors.  They have not returned any of my e-mails and I have trying to resolve this for three weeks.   First off, I should never have gotten a faulty commponent. Secondly, I should be able to have my problem resolved right away.  I feel that their just pushing product without product control.  If I can't get my kit replaced, I won't buy another.

[Mel in HI]

This was my major fear from buying from China in the first place.  If something does go wrong, how quick are they to 'satisfy' the customer?  I especially liked the comment in the survey page...  "...faceless factory engineer who could care less about owner issues."

Now, I am not saying that the company makes horrible products, far from since I don't have any experience.  My point is that since we are buying ONE time from them, how likely are they to strive for satisfaction?  If we had an ongoing relationship with them, THEN I could see where they would want to make us happy.  The bad thing is that the one UNHAPPY customer will sour the oppinion of a dozen (probably more in the internet age) potential customers.  It doesn't matter that there is this forum, the unhappy user would likely post it on blogs elsewhere, where people researching a product would find in google. 

Buying from Joe down the street on the other hand, if something does go wrong he is there to help me.  If not, my Credit Card company will be more interested in helping me out than PayPal ever will be. 

[Dave]

This was my major fear from buying from China in the first place.  If something does go wrong, how quick are they to 'satisfy' the customer?  I especially liked the comment in the survey page...  "...faceless factory engineer who could care less about owner issues."

Now, I am not saying that the company makes horrible products, far from since I don't have any experience.  My point is that since we are buying ONE time from them, how likely are they to strive for satisfaction?  If we had an ongoing relationship with them, THEN I could see where they would want to make us happy.  The bad thing is that the one UNHAPPY customer will sour the oppinion of a dozen (probably more in the internet age) potential customers.  It doesn't matter that there is this forum, the unhappy user would likely post it on blogs elsewhere, where people researching a product would find in google. 

Buying from Joe down the street on the other hand, if something does go wrong he is there to help me.  If not, my Credit Card company will be more interested in helping me out than PayPal ever will be. 

Even buying from Joe across state lines would be preferable to doing business with anybody across the ocean. But I can't understand why Philip is the only one that answers email to sales@goldenmotor.com. It shouldn't be that difficult a thing to get another body involved in responding to customer requests/complaints.

And even a rudimentary network (one or two) of stateside retailers would go a long way toward improving things for Golden. The way things are right now though gives the impression that US sales are pretty low on the priority list.

[CarlsEbike]

Kosta,
I had the same problem as you described, but mine was self inflicted.  When I first received the kit (36v, 500W model) I carefully temporary mounted the front wheel and connected the batteries.  The motor worked just fine. So I knew I had an operational system.  Note: All connectors were connected as received from Goldenmotor.  During the assembly to the bike I had to remove the connections and re-connect several times.  As careful as I was, I managed to bend over one of the pins on the connector from the hall sensors (they are used as position sensors within the motor).  I'm not looking at the bike right now but as I recall it should be the connector with 5 wires from the motor.  The interesting thing here is that even with the bent pin the connector 'felt' like it seated okay.  In fact it took me two tries to get the connector to mate properly without bending the pin again.  Fortunately the bent pin did not short to anything else.  I hope this might help you solve your problem.  Sometimes problems can be simple to solve (if you're lucky).

I just finished making the battery holders and got everything functional for my first ride today.  I'm somewhat on the heavy side ~230 pounds.  The bike/motor got me up to 20 mph (with no pedal assist) on flat ground.  What impressed me was it was able to do ~15 mph up hills.  I only had time for about 11 miles total distance today. When I get some useful data I'll post it here.
...CarlsEbike

[kosta]

Thank you CarlsEbike.  I must have checked the connections a hundred times and never noticed the plug from the wheel with five wires from it had one wire that had somehow sliped around to the out side of the plug. Thankyou

[Mel in HI]

The wierd thing is that to this day, I have not received a response to email to sales.  I am actually happy about that because it prevented me from buying and I found local laws that would prevent me from using as intended for the disabled person I was going to build it for.

The other side of the coin is that I still want to build an ebike, so not answering basically means that they lost a sale. 

Dave has a good point, they should hire someone in the US to answer the questions that people have here, even if only on a part-time basis.  Myelectricbike comes to mind as he has seemed the most informed and the most helpful.  Then they would only have to communicate with that one person here, leading to less stress on 'Phillip' as I am sure most of the questions are repetative..  Another good point is that someone from the US wouldn't be making translation errors as much (like Pole for Poll). 

[OneEye]

Actually, myelectricbike has picked up a reputation for innocuous spelling errors (like the aforementioned hononym, they have a tendency to slip past the spell-check).   

It would be a good idea to empower a US/Canadian native to respond to sales queries from this hemisphere.  Perhaps even regional sales representatives to cover other areas also (Australia, South America, how many languages would a European sales rep need to know anyway?)  The sales rep's would need to be armed with the current price structure and availability, and a reasonable understanding of shipping times and costs for the region.  Unfortunately, it seems some of that information changes frequently.

[Mel in HI]

Even if that type of information changed on a daily basis, there are ways of disseminating that information so that ALL of the affected employees would have it.

We use Sharepoint here at my company and it works great.  When we update some information, it's available to all affected employees.  Granted that you have to break them of the habit of printing out the spec sheets (for easy reference mind you) and keep breaking their arm if they DO print them (you knew you shouldn't be doing that, wasting paper/electricity etc), but eventually everyone knows that if they need to reference something they just click and it's there.  We have people working in the UK, Kenya, Phillipines, Spain, ..... , USA of course and we all look at that same information.  Granted, the people in Kenya have more of a pain than the rest of us (they have limited communications circuits available to them) but I am sure that the guys in China MUST have an internet connection, just put them on the web in a secure fashion for their people only.

Hehe... even if he makes typos (as I do) they would be way less than what would come from someone doing a continual translation from their native language. 

[myelectricbike]

Greetings and thanks Mel in HI for your kind support.

Actually my problem with spelling is that I do not check the results of the speller. Sometimes it will change a word without asking if it is okay.  I need to train myself to start from the beginning after the speller is finished and to check it. I also need to slow down, smell the roses if you will, require that my fingers remain in touch with the old brain - a complaint that has caused me to get slapped on more than one date at the movies.  

Erroneous Chinese translations are obviously a turn off. Most products I find on the discount isle have nothing more seriously wrong than a manual with a spelling or translation error. It shows lack of attention to detail on the part of the manufacturer and Americans in particular have a tendency to reject products with such defects. If nothing else can serve as a good excuse to try something and take it back, then broken English in a manual usually can.

As for official Golden tech support, Golden Tech Support is now Golden's official online tech support. There may be no actual improvement in the information provided, however, unless schematics, etc. are supplied. Also MEB username will be taking the place of myelectricbike username to help myelectricbike reduce, if not to escape entirely the image of nanny and to make messages easier to address and sign.

Enkoy! 

[Mel in HI]

"Golden Tech Support"

Where is golden tech support?  Is that a new website?  Do they answer pre-sales questions like "I want to buy the 48 volt controller, which motor does it mate with and what's the price so I can order one?"

Oh, btw, my spelling is not perfect and neither is my grammar.  The first point might be helped IF I used a spell check, but I get more upset with spell checks changing technical specifications on me, so I likely won't be using one in the forseable future.  I hate it so bad that I have turned spell check OFF in ALL of my Microsoft products as ONE change cost our company over 10 grand to correct after the project was completed.  Microsoft is always telling everyone that we need all these complicated features to their software, yet my favorite editor is just plain notepad.  The same goes to all those features in Vista, as soon as I sit down to it I start trying to figure out how to disable this part or the other.  (Does anyone know how to PERMANENTLY turn off Auto-Play for ALL new drives attached to a computer?  The only way I can see is to wait till it has already run for a particular device and then TRY to see if you can disable it for that device, which really bites on a device that has a different ID every time you stick it into the machine.)