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I have a handful of early starters one of which I stripped, rebuilt and gave a nice shiny coat of paint. When I went to fire up my rebuilt car it was sluggish in a similar way to having a badly connected or corroded earth cable. Worked fine on the bench when I spun it up but fitted to the car and same problem. Anyway after checking my earths I grabbed one of my shittiest looking starters and popped this on and ever since then the car has started without a hitch.
I would like to understand why the nice shiny starter gave a sluggish turnover and imagine something is shorting somewhere. Would somebody mind giving me some guidance as to how to test the unit and identify my problem. (BTW the Bendix etc is all new and shiny too so suspect the problem is electrical) Cheers. Mark

Just a thought but :

Did you use a cleaner on it?
Has this got into the casing and dried on the motor contacts causing a resistive contact between the commutator and slip ring?

It would spin up off load fine then but not when loaded.

Otherwise are the brushes worn?

Simon

Hi Sclemow. Just a thought and one I never would have had!
Its a while since I stripped and rebuilt it but I would almost certainly have wash-tanked the parts before reassembly. From memory the brushes were new. Can you explain this:
'....dried on the motor contacts causing a resistive contact between the commutator and slip ring?' and what i need to do to resolve. Many thanks. Mark

Hi Mark,

If you take it out of it's case and clean the bits below with isopropyl alcohol (switch cleaner) and make sure it is nice and smooth and clean.



Simon

Hi Mark,

If you take it out of it's case and clean the bits below with isopropyl alcohol (switch cleaner) and make sure it is nice and smooth and clean.



Simon