What is this starter rewire you speak of? I might want to copy it. It seems I am always working on a starter.We woke up to this soggy soup of a morning. It's beautiful in its own way, but the lack of visibility isn't conducive to instagram pictures.
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Camping out of the truck made packing up merely a matter of buckling up and turning the key. Super easy, except for the key-turning part. Yes, the failing starter refused to crank. No problem, we'll just coast down the hill, eh? No dice. I did not get enough speed built up to awaken this cold-blooded oil burner. It fired, but not...quite...enough to be useful.
I thought about dropping the starter and rewiring it right then and there. But the truck came to rest in the middle of a puddle (that hadn't been there when we parked), and I opted for the dryer, lazier option. Endlessly cycling the starter until it finally engaged.
Once we got moving, the rest of the ride was uneventful. The water level had risen overnight, but not enough to cause any traction issues.
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And before long we were back at highway elevation.
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Tailed this neat Chevy on the way back to town.
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The rest of the day was just hanging out with Luke & co, we didn't get out wheeling again. When it came time to head home, I had another round of cycling the starter. Once I got home I reconfigured the starter to eliminate the issue, so it shouldn't recur (and it hasn't).
Are you using the gear reduction starter or the original pig?One of the repeated failure modes I've had is a slow-moving throwout arm causing arcing in the solenoid (which eventually fails). As this top-mounted solenoid is now inaccessible (due to the exhaust configuration), I installed a remote solenoid up on the core support. This allowed for easy hot-wiring if I were to encounter another solenoid failure. In order to keep the original solenoid from causing future problems, the remote solenoid fed power directly to the motor. I still needed the original solenoid to actuate the throwout arm, so it was wired in parallel to the motor. This mimics the configuration of an old recoil starter.
The problem, as you may have guessed by now, is that it acted like an old recoil starter. It worked well for the first year. But the solenoid action gradually got slower and slower. By the time this trip rolled around, the motor would consistently spin up before the solenoid could engage the throwout arm. So the starter gear would bounce off of the flywheel teeth, and the motor would not start. That is the issue I was fighting on this trip. It would spin but not engage the teeth (aside from an initial hideous crunching noise as it tried and failed to mesh). The field solution was to continue cranking it until I got lucky and it engaged the ring gear. Far from optimal, but it got me home.
The 'fix' that I applied once I got home was to return to the stock solenoid configuration (no more bypass). This solenoid is fed from a relay, like you'd find on an old Ford truck. The theory here, as Luke posted a few pages back, is that direct battery power, fed through heavier-gauge wire, will actuate the solenoid more quickly than feeding power through the dash switch and its tiny wiring. This should prevent the particular failure mode that I was aiming for with the remote solenoid.
And, since I already had a remote solenoid installed, I opted to use that to feed power to both the solenoid and the motor. Yes, it's overkill. A Ford-style relay would have worked fine. But this way I have no hot wires loitering down there, which may be a good thing if that hot exhaust pipe ever succeeds in melting through my wire insulation.
If you have better ideas for getting these pigs started, let me know.
Yeah I wouldn't use anything but the 28mt.I've used the original pig (27MT). I've used the gear reduction pig (28MT).
I've used the 24V pig. I've used the 24V gear reduction pig.
I've used open-nosed pigs. I've used at least one closed-nose pig. I've even ground off said pig's closed nose.
I've tried all sorts of 6.x starters, and all of them have sucked in various ways.
But, to answer your question, this one is a stock-style gear-reduction 28MT starter. And it's still a pig.
So, it's like this? Your concern about melting wires is the only reason I can think of to have the main starter current going through 2 sets of contacts in series.
But when the solenoid works as intended, the gear should be forward before the contacts touch. Grinding is a common problem if you bypass the starter-mounted solenoid, like this:
The grinding it’s already done is what I’m concerned about. Chew up the ring gear and it can still keep the starter gear from meshing cleanly when it’s working right.
Yes, it's like that. No, it's not ideal to run through 2 sets of contacts. Part of this is laziness. It was already wired that way, so I have left it. On the other hand, since the solenoids are in series, the remote one never will see significant arcing (since it's initially only passing the current for the solenoid). On the Other other hand, that defeats the entire point of having the remote solenoid, so it's pretty much useless.
I do remember pulling that thing a lot. Scared some tourists by that lighthouse when they heard a V8 roaring to get momentum in 6-7 tons on sand, headed in their direction.
Grinding is a common problem if you bypass the starter-mounted solenoid, like this:
I do remember pulling that thing a lot. Scared some tourists by that lighthouse when they heard a V8 roaring to get momentum in 6-7 tons on sand, headed in their direction.
It was nice to keep the group moving, though. "Let's roll out. Last rig here has to pull the Suburban"
Because I parked up on the side of the road so I didn't have to go down into that soft sand.. That stuff sucks almost as bad as mudWhy didn't @Monty5150 pull the burb outta the sand box? He had the best combination of weight and tires...
I'd me more than happy to help out.
