Lyttelton is one of the older parts of Centurion, and its housing shows it: solid stands, mature gardens, and boundary walls and gate posts that were built long before anybody automated anything.
Old walls, and the posts set into them
The recurring fault on a Lyttelton swing gate is not the motor and not the arm. It is the post.
A gate post set into ageing brickwork moves over decades. The lean at the post is invisible; the drop at the far edge of the gate is not. The gate starts catching the ground, or the leaves stop meeting in the middle, and the arm is asked to force it through until a bracket cracks. On a slider, the track and the rack are dealt with under sliding gate repairs.
Adjusting the arm to compensate is the common wrong repair, and it is common because it is cheaper on the day. Resetting the post costs more once and is the only version that holds. Where the fault turns out to be the motor itself, that is ordinary gate motor repair work rather than anything exotic.
Retrofitted automation on hand-built gates
A great many Lyttelton gates were fabricated locally, decades ago, and automated long afterwards.
Those gates are frequently better made than a modern panel — heavier steel, deeper frames — and they were never designed to be driven by a motor. They are rarely perfectly square, and a frame that flexes works a rack loose within a year.
Done properly, with the frame checked and stiffened and the wheels replaced with parts rated for powered use, an old Lyttelton gate outlives the motor bolted to it. Done as a bolt-on, it does not.
What is worth doing here
The posts and hinges first on a swing gate, because everything else inherits them. Freed, greased, and reset where they have moved.
The frame on an older gate before any new motor goes on, because automating a gate that flexes transfers the problem to the hardware.
And the track before the rains on a slider, which is the same advice as everywhere in Centurion but matters more on a stand with mature trees dropping into it.
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