I installed the Lucas-rebuilt started I bought from TRF and it works great.
Cranks the engine effortlessly, for long periods, with hardly any battery
drain.
However, sometimes the pinion gear wedges against the flywheel. Once this
happened with the started relay engaged so the motor was drawing full current.
It heated the battery cables up to HOT almost instantly, boiling off residue,
smoking, and burning the !*&#@^ out of my friend who touched the ground cable.
Bad news!!! Major fire hazard, as the starter is not fused at all...
We had to roll the car in gear to disengage the pinion. It could be heard
releasing, click! So, there are two questions:
Should the pinion gear be so stiff to freewheel? Turning it by hand
requires some force, it's not smooth or easy by any means.
Should the flywheel teeth be greased to ease the pinion into place?
My understand is that the ramp on the engaging side of the pinion gear is
meant to cause the gear to rotate as needed to mesh with the flywheel teeth,
but if the flywheel and pinion are dry metal it could wedge and not slide
down the ramp.
The combination of hard-freewheeling pinion plus dry metal surfaces spells
power-wedge to me.
Anyone? Grease the flywheel teeth? Especially the front side?
--ian
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