Shouldn't the starter spin connected to battery

[gregski]

OK, I don't have a starter solenoid, the starter is on the engine and I hook up the negative from a good battery to the engine block as my ground, and I tap the positive battery cable aligator clamp on the positive bolt on the starter and it won't spin, why?

I thought it should spin and it just won't engage the fly wheel because there is no starter solenoid to make it move the gear forward.

 

[78CobraII]

The Ford starter solenoid is actually located on the inner fender up until somewhere in the '90's, then it moved down to the starter like the GM. Of course it doesn't take much looking to find GM owners, especially hot rodders, adding a Ford remote solenoid because of hot starting problems. Here is a decent write up with some wiring diagrams: Scott's Nova Resource Site - Remote Starter Solenoid Installation

The lump on top of the Ford starter is (accoring to Wiki) a "movable pole shoe" (Starter motor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

This type of starter eliminated the solenoid, replacing it with a movable pole shoe and a separate starter relay.

Although from the description, it still sounds like another solenoid...

I don't see why a Ford starter wouldn't start if you put 12 V + on the terminal and grounded the case, even without the starter solenoid.

 

[Tazz]

The starter in your Mustang is a field wound unit. The starter relay is mounted on the fender. The lump you are describing is the cover for the movable pole piece. The acts as a switch for the pull in and hold in circuits on this starter. Just connecting ground to the block does not insure a good ground to the starter. When you touched the B+ terminal on the starter with the battery, did it spark ? If not, you still might have a bad ground, dirty or corroded mounting surface where the starter bolts up.

 

[gregski]

thank your for reading, your advice, and help

in case something was binding, i decided to take the starter off the engine, then I had the bright idea of using a battery charger set to "Engine Start" to try and get it to spin, that did not work

since i couldn't spin the gear by hand both ways, I decided to take the starter apart inspect the brushes and clean it up a bit with electronic parts cleaner, battery cleaner for the corosion, and trusty WD40, after I cleaned it I could now spin it by hand

I tried the battery charger trick again and it still did not work, so I started my truck and hooked up jumper cables to it and hooked up the negative to the core, and tapped the positive on the side bolt, this made a few small sparks and still did not spin the starter

remember I am doing this to learn first, to do it right the first time is option two, plus I don't have much money to spend on this

tomorrow morning I will take it in to AutoZone and have them bench test it for me, I may pick up a brush kit for $15 bucks to learn how to rebuild a starter, I know what used brushes look like now, so if the new ones look in much better condition I will buy them

I'm learning and I'm having fun, got any ideas for me?

 

[gregski]

here's the third picture / attachment

 

[Tazz]

The drive will spin somewhat freely in one direction, that is the overrun clutches working. It should be harder to spin in the direction it locks up so it can spin the engine. The commutator looked fairly good from the picture. I could not see the brushes. The starter draws about 45 amps during dree spin and around 125 during cranking. Good Luck.

 

[gregski]

Took my old starter to Auto Zone today and had them test it. It ran great very strong. So it is good and I don't need a new starter. Now I don't know what the hell is going on. Someone pointed out that maybe using battery jumper cables I'm not making a good enough connection, well the machine at Auto Zone uses aligator clamps that are even smaller than the massive ones on my jumper cables and it works great. My friend works there and he showed me how he was hooking it up, basically the exact same way as I was at home.

I came home and took the battery out of my truck and put it on my garage floor, that way I could make a better connection on the top terminal posts without going over the existing terminals and things getting in the way. This time the starter spun slowly but the bendix did not jump forward.

I tried putting my battery charger on the battery set on AUTO START (as in boost the amps to start the car) and from there I ran the jumper cables to the starter and still the starter barely spun.

This is driving me crazy my dad and I used to test starters on the garage floor or in the appartment parking lot with our foot on them and they went zooom way fast, what the heck is up with this one.

 

[gregski]

IT WORKS

So I went to a junk yard where I bought some battery cables among other things. I cleaned the heck out of the cables and bolted them on to the battery terminals and bolted the positive cable to the bolt on the starter. Then I tapped the neggative cable to the starter housing and whalla it spins like mad and the bendix jumps forward. I owe a beer to the guys who kept saying you must have a good connection and the battery cables may not be enough. Guys thank you very much for all your help this will be the last of this post I promise. Feels good to learn something and have it work.

See the picture of the Poor Man's Starter Bench Test Setup:

 

[Wart]

This

is not much of a power source. Thats not much bigger than my trickle charger.

And consumer jumper cables really aren't much for carrying high current.