It's Not Just Lucas Starters

[HealeyRick]

I've been having some hot starting issues with the Healey, culminating with a failure of the Bendix drive engaging at last week's British Car Show in Boston and me having to roll the car downhill and bump start to leave the show field. Then I started hearing some noises coming from the bellhousing on the drive home. When I took out the starter and disassembled it, I found this mess in what was basically a new starter. Luckily, no damage to my aluminum flywheel. The mini starter I used has its own solenoid which I wired in conjunction with the Healey solenoid. After researching it a little further, it looks like when wired with two solenoids the mini-starter can act like a generator unless a diode is added in the system, causing the solenoid not to fully release the starter when the starter button is released. I suspect that's what happened here. So I ordered an older-style starter without the attached solenoid. Wired it up to the Healey solenoid and all seems right with the world again.

 

[Wausau 911]

Why wouldn't you have keep the new starter and ditched the OEM solenoid. The new starter probably had a reduction gear. Put on on my BJ7 last year and she starts much better. trying to keep everything OEM?

 

[HealeyRick]

Why wouldn't you have keep the new starter and ditched the OEM solenoid. The new starter probably had a reduction gear. Put on on my BJ7 last year and she starts much better. trying to keep everything OEM?

My motor's a Ford V-8 and I bought the mini-starter as I was not sure I'd have room for a full size starter when I did the motor swap. The Ford style mini starters require a second solenoid and that's the way I wired it. There may have been another alternative, but I'll be the first to admit I'm an electrical dunce. Since I needed to replace the mini starter and realized there was plenty of room for a full sized one, i bought one of those at about 1/2 the price of the mini starter.