Starter woes! (Pics) (Solution Found)

[BigggWilly]

Well, after my car not starting this morning, and me doing some super fun snowy morning trouble shooting, this is what i've found:




and this:



For the life of me I don't know why they use plastic in these things! :x

So since the rest of my starter is still a-okay (as far as I can tell) and I don't want to shell out $210 bucks for a new starter, I was wondering if anybody in the area (SW ontario) has an old starter laying around that I could have ($$) the plastic gear out of? Name your favorite beer, and i'll be there in a jiffy.

Thanks all,

Will.

[jtanguay]

:shock: wow!!!  Which model starter is this??? Please dont tell me my '86 jetta TD has plastic garbage like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[srivett]

The small 3 mounting bolt starters have the plastique in them.  The big honking 2 bolters do not.  Somebody should be able to source a rebuild kit but not Canadian Tire.  They only have solenoids for this one.  Your best bet would be with a starter rebuilding shop.

Steve

[Centurion]

Find a rebuild shop - and yes - you problably have the plastic crap -

costs me about a hundred a rebuild - and usually lasts 2 to three years depending

since I am in New brunswick - CMAC - in Fredericton is not much use unless you blow on the way by sometime.

But there is my solution

[BigggWilly]

Well,

I found a replacement gear at A & N auto electric in London. It was only $20, compared to $240 for a new starter! I'm just about to install it, so I'll let you know how it goes.

[fspGTD]

You inspired me to open up a spare starter I've got here, never before opening up one of these starters before... I was able to get to that part.  Here is what the good one from my spare starter looks like:


PS - I did find a problem with this one that I took apart.  It had a brush that was split into two pieces:

The two brush pieces were hanging together inside the brush holder just barely.  But all the brushes were pretty misaligned and unevenly worn.  Anyone know of a good source for discount bosch starter replacement parts?  The VW dealer wants way too much for these (brush pack costs $90 US from VW!)

These gear reduction models are quite a bit lighter than the older direct driver starters, which is why I have switched to using it in my Rabbit for competition.

[srivett]

It looks to me that those brushes were worn out anyway.  I think they are supposed to be way longer...I wish I measured mine when I had the starter apart last month, my 300K km starter looked new inside but the brush cable rusted off so I had a new one welded on.  Your replacement brush pack should come with a plastic holder in the middle which will allow you to slap it onto the armature without any fiddling of brushes.

Regardless, try to get rid of as much of that old green grease as you can and put in some new white lithium grease.  You are supposed to use blue loctite on the solenoid screws.

Steve

[fspGTD]

I went out and bought one of those "slam it with a hammer" manual impact drivers to get out the solenoid phillips screws.  Worked great after I got the tool!

I've got it all disassembled now...  cleaned a bunch of the parts too.  I'm taking the old brushes and the rotor thing to a local auto electric shop to see if they can turn the contacts on the rotor and maybe pick up some new brushes and see what they think about the condition of the bearings (bushings) too.  I don't have the A2 bentley so I can't look up the spec on the wear limit of the brushes, but the A1 bentley (for the direct drive starter) says the wear limit of brushes on that starter 13mm.  These brushes were worn down to about 8-9mm!

[cheng]

I needed another starter for my Jetta and found out that the Bosch rebuilds use the same part number (sr22x) for both the small gear reduction type and the older direct drive type.

I made them go through all of the boxes untill they found me 2 of the old style. (the Jetta is tired and needs all of the starter speed I can muster)

but you need the G/R starter for the A2 series as that 3rd bolt hole is used for the front motor mount.

that would be for the 85 turbo Jetta that I just picked up for $300
(pics to come soon) I didnt need another project but I cant pass on a bargain like that.

Jake, yes I do know of a supplier for starter and alt parts but they are wholesale only. ( yea that never stopped me before, either)
I will try to remember the name or swing by where they used to be.

if we can find part #'s for reference I bet we can get this stuff pretty cheap.

Ken

[fspGTD]

I found a replacement brush holder (aftermarket) for $20 at my favorite auto electric shop in Seattle.

But, then I was fiddling with my starter and decided to take the magnets out of the cylindrical housing.  Well those magnets snapped together when I had them out and I found out that they are quite fragile... one of them broke into 2 pieces and another chipped it's corner!  Crap.  :oops:  And then later I find out that some magnets are polarized positive on the inside and others negative on the inside, so they need to be put back in the right orientation and I didn't really keep track of what that is.  I originally had an idea of saving weight by changing the housing from the thick stamped steel to thinner, lightweight aluminum.  But then I read that the steel housing helps strengthen the magnetic field so it's probably thick ferrous steel for a reason.  So the lightweight aluminum housing probably isn't a good idea after all.  Oops... looks like I'll need a core starter motor if I am to get this one rebuilt.  I did see one at the wrecking yard the other day... probably a good used one; I wonder how much they would want for it.

[srivett]

Well, if you were tight for cash you could undo what you did.  With motorcycles we epoxy cracked magnets back together.  You'll need a disposable compass to get the magnets orientation figured out.  But, if you get them all backwards your starter will also run backwards.

Steve

[fspGTD]

Well, if you were tight for cash you could undo what you did.  With motorcycles we epoxy cracked magnets back together.  You'll need a disposable compass to get the magnets orientation figured out.  But, if you get them all backwards your starter will also run backwards.

Steve

Steve - I epoxied the magnets back together.  I took apart my other starter to use to determine the correct pole orientation of the magnets (applying the rule: "opposites attract, same poles repel.")

There was a problem with my other starter by the way (the one I just recently took apart.)  It was cranking slower than I thought it should.  It's a NAPA rebuilt starter, and had always had this problem by the way.  I did some multimeter testing of it during cranking, and found an excessive (2.5 volt) drop across the solenoid terminals during cranking, which combined with about a half volt of drop in the battery cables, connections, and ground path, left only about 7.5 volts making it to the starter motor.  My miniature battery was holding an impressive 10.5 volts during cranking.  The starter is strong enough to crank over the motor and does so reliably, however I believe that it just isn't spinning it fast enough.

Now I am wondering if the solenoid is actually bad (IE: it has excessively worn or corroded contacts) or if perhaps, the control signal reaching the solenoid through the ignition switch isn't strong enough.  (It's supposed to be full positive voltage, but I didn't think to measure how strong it was.)  Doing some research on the web, I see many aircooled VW'ers and some watercooled VW'ers especially those with automatic trannys adding a relay to the starter control signal to ensure it gets full positive voltage, although this is usually to fix a "no crank when hot" problem, not a problem like what I am experiencing which is the starter always cranks the engine over, just not fast enough.

I have at one time replaced my ignition key electrical switch, but that was a long time ago, and the mechanical switch with ignition lock tumber is original and old, and is letting the key wobble around a bit.  I have a spare solenoid from my other starter I could try using, although both solenoids measured "near zero" resistance when the solenoid was manually pressing together.  I am not sure if swapping the solenoid will work, but I could try it.  I can now put together both of these starters and try both in fact.  Have any of you guys experienced this problem of excessive voltage drop across the solenoid and have any advice?

[fspGTD]

An update: I got the starter motor back together with a different solenoid, and the problem is fixed!  There is now only a .2 volt drop between battery positive terminal and solenoid output terminal (instead of the 2.7 volt drop it had before.)  With the battery a bit low, the starter received 9.6 volts to it's motor section, and was cranking much more briskly.  I had the entire motor disassembled, and I cleaned everything up, installed some new brushes, lubricated it, and also did a good job of sanding the commutator nice and smooth.

There apparently was no problem with my ignition switch.

For kicks, I disassembled the bad solenoid to see what was going on inside it.  These things have the outer steel housing swaged over the plastic end cap, and I ended up multilating it to open it up.  Inside, the contacts had some major pitting and also a funky color and texture.

Edit: pics of what is looks inside the solenoid...

mutilated the swaged steel solenoid housing to get it open:


here's what's behind the solenoid end cap (notice the bad electrical contacts):


here is what one of the studs / contacts looks like (pretty close to a standard bolt huh...)


here is what the piece that moves and completes the electrical connection looks like:

[srivett]

My solenoid just died.  How much did your replacement cost?  

I'm getting power down to the starter from both the switch and the battery directly but I'm not getting a click or anything.  If I put power to the solenoid output I get a spinning motion but no engagement.   :?  

Thanks, Steve

[srivett]

Anybody know what terminal 15 does?  You use Terminal 50 to apply the ignition signal.  I found that the little strap between the solenoid output post and Terminal 15 was rotted off so I soldered on a new one.  Seems to work now.  I used something like 16 gauge wire (a piece of 4 prong trailer wiring) and was wondering if it will be thick enough...from the previous pics I'm thinking it'll be okay until it too starts rotting.

Steve