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A couple weeks ago my starter stopped working and I seen sparks flying out of it when I jumped the solenoid.
I thought it had a loose cable or they were corroded but they where tight and clean.
after watching some rebuild videos I seen a flaw with pretty much all starters.
The brush assembly has 4 brushes, 2 with positive voltage and 2 with ground.
The 2 ground brushes are tied to the assembly and the assembly is grounded to the back cover of the starter with 2 phillips screws.
These screws get loose or maybe never tight enough new but I managed to get a stubby on 1 screw and cranked it down, the other screw I got a tiny bit of movement but its a tight spot.
Anyway after doing this, the starter spins like never before, really fast and strong.
I just wanted to share this before people shell out for a new starter.
Of course an old starter could just be worn out brushes but mine was replaced 3 years ago by the previous owner.
The best plan would be to pull the starter and take those screws out 1 at a time and sand and clean the mating surface but I got lucky.
Friends' truck had same scenerio..ohmed out relay and saw a huge V drop. Crawled under and them phillips screws were completely backed out. Figuring the starter was done, we opted to ana utozone one to get him back on road...think he sent it out for rebuild.
Few days ago I decided to check on my original (96K) up-pipes to see if they were leaking or leaking enough to warrant me ordering some bellow uppies and doing some other work while I had everything removed. What I did see that puzzled me was that my starter was loose (both bolts) and that I could rock the starter back and forth. I wasn’t having any issues starting the truck and the only thing that caught my eye was that it felt the motor wasn’t turning over fast enough which I always blamed the batteries for this. So into the garage, 13mm socket, tighten that baby down and wowwwww.....my motor came alive. Now the starter spins like it never did and it feels like a total new experience. I think the issue here was...I wasn’t getting a good ground and I’m very lucky the starter didn’t fall off or destroyed my flywheel.......As for the up-pipes, I can get away with the replacement for now.
Starter died easy fix
