F*@£&%$ starters!!!!

[Jimmy Oldskool]

I'm having major issues at the minute with starter motors?

Had 3 in the van in the last week, not new, but still, gotta have pretty bad luck to have 3 poor starters......

Anyway, I've exhausted my stock, so was wondering if a petrol starter would work, got a few kicking about, a couple of G60 ones, a box full of 8v GTi ones and 2 kr 16v units......

Anyone know, as I've got 2 days off of work and need the van to do the pre Christmas run to the dump/collect the Christmas tree etc!

Cheers

[Rabbit on Roids]

a gas starter wont start a diesel unless its already warm. it just wont crank it over fast enough. try checking your ground and power wires. and the condition of your battery. i had a fairly bad ground and didnt know it, thought it was starter problems, never could fix it. then i put a new ground wire on it and it turned over like a mother.

[moTthediesel]

I don't know, but does anyone make a Denso-style mini starter for WC Volkswagen's?

When I put the Quantum engine in my old 356 I thought that a big Bosch planetary gear 911 starter would certainly have enough poop to start a little 1.6l diesel -- WRONG! It was barely adequate if the engine was cold, but with the compression up on a warm engine -- no go at all.

I did a little searching and found out about the mini-starters. They are the Denso type reduction gear starters like the ones on the Cummins diesel in my Dodge. Much smaller and way lighter than the Bosch, I got one from a vendor on ebay for about $100. Let me tell you, that little bastard kicks azzzz! Warm or cold, it spins my engine like a top, I love it!

I just did a quick search and couldn't find one listed for any water cooled VW's, but maybe someone is making them, they're available for just about everything else --

[745 turbogreasel]

take one apart and clean it, new grease on the plastic gears, might surprise you.

[fatmobile]

Solenoids bad? or what's going wrong?
 Where do they get warm?

[burn_your_money]

Change the bushing in the tranny housing. Vince has a nice writeup on the proceedure

[FoXBoXRaCiNG]

I ran a Mkiii gasser this past summer, it was revised so it didn't have the shaft for the bendix to ride back and forth on... Even when the cold hit, it was still cranking over, just not as fast, a good temporary solution. For those here in town that said it couldn't be done and would blow up after a couple starts, Myth busted, keep in mind all this was done with both a bad ground and a bad positive feed connection...