Postby Workshop Help » 06 Apr 2008 00:59
Funny you should ask. We pulled the starter this week on ours and diseccected the solenoid. The actual mechanics for removing it from the car is straight forward. Disconnect the positive battery cable, note the wire color connections, pull the connectors off, unscrew the nut holding down the battery to starter cable, remove the three nuts and bolts holding the starter to the engine, and pull it out.
Perhaps I should say 'manipulate' it out. Okay, wrestle it out. The difficulty in removing the starter has a lot to do with using the proper tools in the first place. A very long 3/8" rachet extension to hold and unscrew the starter bolts makes life a whole lot easier. If an exhaust header is present, the heat shield must be wrastled loose as part of the extraction. Rest assured that you will be dealing with a greasy, heavy chunk of metal that will exhaust the muscles in your arms and hands getting it out and then, in.
Once it is out and on your well lit work bench, the solenoid can be disassembled for examination. It is held on by two bolts on the front and one on the rear. You will observe, once it's apart, it is quite robust in construction. There is a rubber/vinyl seal inside used as a water barrier. This seal has a tendency to tear apart over the years and gum up the action with a resultant drag on the starter function as the solenoid is hesitant to release. This gives that kind of semi-grinding noise that causes one to panic.
By trimming away the loose pieces of the seal the solenoid is freely moving back and forth. Also the dirt and grime should be cleaned off. The hard part is reassembling the solenoid onto the lever. There is a spring covering the end slot that goes over and locks onto the lever. We used a piece of binder twine to hold back the spring, thus allowing the slot to go over and engage the lever end. Once in place, the twine was jerked out and the unit reattached to the starter body.
The factory manual recommends the starter brushes be replaced when they get down to a length of about 3/8" from their new length of about 3/4". We did not dig deeper into the starter as the solenoid was the culprit.
There are alternatives to the factory starter in the market place, tho they can be expensive. We did call the local Auto Zone and they have in their system a replacement solenoid for $89.99US plus tax. The solenoid in the latest Victoria British catalog is $29.95. However, unless someone has bought one of these and can testify, I would be suspect as to it's quality given recent purchases from them and getting parts sourced from China and India that we returned.
We suggest you may want to delve into your solenoid first and then have the local auto parts store check out the starters performance on their testing machine, since it is a free service.
Mildred Hargis
