Here we go again, Bosch High Torque only a year and half old. Click nothing!
Pulled the starter and tested good, cleaned grounds and all connections and all good for a week. Drove it a couple of mile to the office and an hour later nothing. won't jump but will bump start. Light taps on the solenoid will then make it sound like current frying wires but I see nothing melting.
Thoughts.
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I recently had a very similar issue. Replaced the starter with a good used one, same problem. Bought and installed a new starter, same problem. Checked and cleaned the battery to frame ground, same problem. Bought a new additional ground cable for the starter to the frame, same problem.
Scratched my head until it bled and the light bulb finally lit up. "IT'S THE DAMN IGNITION SWITCH" That's the only thing left! Replaced the switch, problem solved.
I too just put in a new switch and while in there replace my wiper/turn signal switches.
I left it out, but I also checked the flywheel teeth for a bad spot, but it was perfect. There isn't much left that I know of that could cause this is there?
Could be voltage drop. You would need to check voltage to starter on the car, not bench. Salty air a buggah.
Jim Kelly posted:
Salty air a buggah.
My hunch, too.
On our sailboat (berthed in salt water), when redoing any connections in heavy current circuits (battery, starter, diesel glow plugs, etc.), I sand down to bare metal, refasten tight, then coat the outside of the whole connection with lithium grease to keep moisture out.
Odds are it's some connection in the starting circuit, not the starter or solenoid themselves, and once you find it and clean it up, you may need to grease the connection. (Apply grease after the connection is made tight.)
Where possible, in a marine environment, soldering is often the best alternative to contact connections.
Good luck!
Good stuff, Al.
That sailboat I mentioned had similar starting problems that were fixed with the kind of solenoid Gene Berg talks about.
With many marine diesels, you turn on glow plugs for a few seconds before starting from cold. On my boat, the circuit for the glow plugs ran through some skinny wires and several connectors all the way up to the cockpit and back. Hooking up a solenoid near the engine (that was in turn controlled by the wimpy switch in the cockpit) shortened glow plug times from 45 seconds to 10. And it's always started first shot since then.
The solenoid I used, from West Marine, is ruggedized for the marine environment, so might be a better choice for a Speedster in Hawaii than the one from Gene Berg. It's been in my boat for 12 years now without missing a beat.
Dielectric grease is the stuff to used. Use it on battery cable ends, sparkplug boots and light bulb sockets. Permatex makes it in a small tube as do others.
Or........Just go to your local Hawaiian NAPA store or equivalent and get a starter relay for a 1960-1980 Ford anything - Mustang, Torino, Grenada, you name it. Looks just like the West marine version for less than what Berg is asking. That should fix it, but it is VAST overkill because the solenoid is slightly different on a VW than a ford.
In fact, ANY small 20-30 amp relay, physically mounted near the starter terminals and driven by the "start" position on the key switch will solve this problem. It is not rocket science. The starter solenoid is a big, honkin relay that, rather than just close two contacts for the starter motor to spin, it has to move a lever to make a gear move to engage with the flywheel teeth to start the engine. It takes a bunch of current to move that relay/solenoid (not to mention the starter, itself) and that causes a current drop in the entire, car-wide electrical system.
The key switch and that looooooong wire from the switch to the starter was never really designed to provide maximum current (power) to the starter solenoid - the wire is too small, for one thing. The length of the wire alone will give you about a 2% current drop per foot or about 10% for the overall length, then add in more drops across the switch contacts, crimp connections, all that stuff. Bottom line is, by the time the current gets to the solenoid, it doesn't have enough "poop" to engage the starter.
What's a fellow to do? Well, do what Mitch and I recommend - a relay close to the starter connections, driven by the key start position, that, in turn, makes the RELAY provide current/voltage to the solenoid "start" terminal through maybe 6"-8" of wire, not nine feet through the switch.
THAT should cure it. It's gonna be like MAGIC!
After hours of removing, re-cleaning connections, I put it back in...NO go!
So I pulled it and put my old starter in and it fired up.
I have the relay but never installed it as I was concerned about it being exposed to the weather, plus it had no mounting tab and I did not want it flopping around. My previous issue turned out to be a bad battery ground. The genius that built the car ground it under the tank on top the tunnel in an impossible place to reach. Had to have one person hold a long wrench in the tunnel while I tightened from outside the passenger wheel well.
In my case it was intermittent and I thought it was fixed when I changed the starters, but it soon did the same thing. I didn't take the switch apart, but I'm sure I would have seen poor or corroded contacts if I would have.
It made sense to me afterwards, because if I turned the ignition key on and off several times it would eventually turn over and start.
Makes sense.
Also, look really, really hard at your battery cable terminations. I had a bad end on my negative terminal (looked good, but had corroded inside the swaged on end) that gave me no end of fits.
my Thread named something like: "Many ways to fail" chronicles what a faulty corroded battery cable can do, hidden completely from sight until darkness descends.
To echo Stan, I think it cost about $20 to replace my battery cables. Cheap insurance.
Also, I recommend the IMI-101 starter, rather than the Bosch one. Gear reduction, Japanese starter motor, American made except the motor.
Thanks gang!
