[Marko_SJ]

OK. Mechanically handicapped needs some help. I have searched this, and I have checked most if not all of the things people suggest. Todays search at work found that Royce suggests earth near dizzy can cause trouble and there is the battery/firewall earth too, which I'll double check tonight when I get to work on the MOFO again.

I'll go through a short list of what I've done.

1. I have put in a starter relay

2. I have cleaned the solenoid and polished its terminals with sand paper.

3. I have stripped the motor and cleaned it (heaps of crud in there, I noticed the brushes were full of it so I cleaned them, also one of them seems "sticky" and isn't loaded right against the commutator, could this be my trouble?)

4. I've also cleaned the crud out of the gears and bendix/lever mech too.

5. Checked the terminals on batt, cleaned them, cleaned the copper on the start leads, cleaned the terminals on starter.

6. Yes, the ball did fall out and I couldn't work out where it went . I was in a hurry because my brother needed to borrow the car, so I put it back together anyway and it doesn't seem to mind.

So AFAIK, this leaves the power cables to the starter itself? These go bad after a while right?

The starter works, but not consistently. The longer you leave it, the more reluctant to work it gets.

I hope this is specific and well described enough for diagnosis/advice. I'm releuctant to change the starter again (price and wastefulness, [its near new!] the actual job is easy as considering I've invested in anti-sieze )

Also, what is it that they do when they "rebuild" the starter?

[Reubs]

Marko_SJ wrote:

earth near dizzy can cause trouble and there is the battery/firewall earth too

Neither of those connections will stop the starter motor from cranking, but resistance in the ignition switch or a poor contact in the solenoid coil circuit will. This is why people add a relay to this circuit. I needed to replace the spade terminal on the starter solenoid on both of my Sierras which fixed intermittent cranking problems.

[Matthew]

My starter wouldn't crank 50% of the time when the battery-firewall earth snapped.

[johnmath]

Marko_SJ wrote:

So AFAIK, this leaves the power cables to the starter itself? These go bad after a while right?

The starter works, but not consistently. The longer you leave it, the more reluctant to work it gets.

The copper in the cables will be OK but sometimes the crimp terminations at the ends of the cables work loose even though the cable looks fine. Fortunately there is an easy test. Identify the two cables - positive from the battery to the starter motor, negative from the battery to the engine block. When the engine is reluctant to crank persist for a while and them switch off and immediately feel both ends of both cables where they terminate to see if any points are warm. The warm one(s) need re-crimping/tightening. This is how I found out that the crimping of the negative cable at the block was faulty in my car causing an intermittent staring problem where the engine wouldn't always crank properly. The heat is caused by the electricity going through a high resistance, and the resistance is the cause of the cranking problem.

[Marko_SJ]

Cheers fellas, I've written down your suggestions to check this arvo. Gotta use the car to pull out shrubs tomorrow.

Keep the ideas flowing guys.

I've asked my brother to pick up a newy anyway, but I'll get this one going if I can.

Are sticky brushes in the motor itself likely to cause trouble?

[killazook]

One of my mates had a drama with his sierra and starting and It turned out to be bad earth might pay to put new starter cables on it.

[Marko_SJ]

Needed to use car, smashed in a new starter and its gone. No other factors changed. Other than cleaning grease off the bell housing where it attached.

Might strip old one down again, and see if I can get it to work on the bench,