Quote:
Originally Posted by leathermang
In the archives you can find my experience with a starter that had no reasonable pattern for when it decided not to do anything...
We need to keep in mind first that these starters are working against a 21 to 1 compression ratio from the day they are installed...
Second... many people own cars which have had multiple owners and have no idea how old the currently bolted up stater is... it could actually be original to the car... they are tough machines with HUGE brushes on them ( the pieces of carbon which press against the armature are called brushes )....
When mine was acting up I took it to a small farming town which has great level one repair people... and asked them to take it apart... and I was able to stand there and see it actually open up...not that I don't trust repair people... I am just describing the situation... they showed me that the brushes were still ' OK'.... but the three little screws on the end which keeps the superstructure which holds those brushes in line had very seeable electric arc burns on it... and they were clearly loose....
So while we always start with battery condition, wire condition, key switch...
AT SOME POINT in time we just have to admit these very sturdy starters can just wear out... or need fixing... I was lucky that they had an already rebuilt starter which had not been picked up .... which saved a round trip to pick up mine.... but part of the point is that if you can open up yours... it might be as simple as loose screws... tighten and keep on dieseling.... or repair other stuff while you are there...
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Very good information.
Also remember there is a phenomenon known as 'Heat Soak'. This is very well known to owners of older Ford Pickup and others also. As a start motor gets very hot in summer especially from radiant heat and conducted heat transfer from the bolck and exhaust manifold etc it becomes more sluggish. Hot conductors do not conduct as well as cold conductors. Remember what superconductivity is?? On a hot day when I try to start my aged 1979 F350 after a long trip it barely turns over. I wait, let it cool and it is back to new. This explains at least one contributing factor to the initial post of this thread. The best way to think of this problem is to imagine you are an electron swimming through a tortuous passage from the pos terminal all the way back to the neg terminal. Just the corrosion you encounter at the grounding bolts alone are like big rocks.
Great forum guys.......