Further to my solenoid post ...gremlins.

37coop

37coop

Well-known member
Hi guys ,on the subject of my recent post on 12 volt with 6 volt solenoid problems. I received my 12 volt solenoid and fitted it on with a new two pole live starter button ,I wired the starter button to work when the ignition is switched on only ,carefully rigged it up and it spun over nicely,turned it off and did it again ...great. I did a few other jobs in the workshop and decided to see if it would turn over using a remote starter switch from under the hood,I connected it from the live lead to the starter lead and it just made a sound elsewhere ,I went inside the car and turned on the ignition and pressed the button and the same sound,I turned the ignition off and the starter motor started spinning ...I ran round to the battery with the S motor still spinning and luckily I,v got a quick release live cable to the battery and with a rag in my hand pulled it off with it spitting Sparks and smoke...scary,what's that all about,bit frightened to touch it till I know the problem....any ideas what I,v done wrong and what can I do to get it back to normal,never heard of this before.?
Any advice would be appreciated,thanks. Jim.
 
Back in the 70's I was trying to start a '64 Falcon, and the
battery was old and did not have a lot cranking power, so
i could tell it wasn't going to start, so I let off of the switch
and the starter kept turning the engine over ever so slowly.

By the time I returned with a wrench to remove a battery
cable, it was completely dead and had stopped turning over.

I replaced the crappy battery, and I also installed a new
solenoid, and drove that car for quite a few years after
that, and it never happened again...





.
 
I had a similar problem and it turned out to be a bad solenoid. Mine smoked and actually caught on fire while I was in my shop. Was lucky to have a battery disconnect and not out driving somewhere.
 
My first question would by why would you wire it through the ignition switch? That does not seem like a good idea to me! Second question is you state you connected to remote starter to the "live feed" to the starter. Not sure what that refers to, but if it is the large cable from the starter solenoid to the starter, that is not going to work! The remote starter connects to the battery cable side of the starter solenoid & the starter terminal on the solenoid. If you do a bunch of strange wiring connections and hookups you can get feed back loops that can cause all kinds of issues.
 
yup,electrics is not my thing,it's wired from a live which is activated when the ignition is turned on to the starter button then from the button to the small wire on the solenoid ,worked fine till I used the remote starter,reckon I might have cooked the new solenoid,tomorrow I,m going to check the solenoid between the two main terminals to see if there is continuity,if there is I guess it's toast and buy another, didn't see a part number on the solenoid. Thanks.
 
I bought a solenoid from ebay . off shore manufacture. was worse than the old one . Took two hits with a wrench to unstick it. Old one only took one. Got a better quality one ,works good now.
 
In my opinion you have the starter button wired wrong, it should be wired to an always hot sourse, not a switched source, but up to you. What you posted is not a test of the solenoid, it is just jumpering around it. You test it by jumping the battery side of the soleniod to the start terminial (the one wired to the starter button). This should activate the soleniod and turn over the starter. Be sure it is out of gear.
 
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Yup you are right ,I will wire the button to permanent live later,hopefully a wack on the solenoid will unstick it if that is the problem...early morning here so will be playing around with it later ,cheers.
 
Since the ignition switches aren´t to sturdy putting the extra load of the solenoid does 2 bad things...increase the chances of burning the ignition switch...and dropping the voltage to the coil while cranking.
Some modern cheap solennoids don´t have the current handling capacity needed and can burn like it was welded togetter resulting in continues cranking.
 
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