So folks 1990 f150 4.9L with a ZF in it. It came with a mazda 5 speed. 4x4
The concentric slave cylinder bit the dust and i swapped the ZF into it. Put a new flywheel, clutch, pressure plate, slave cylinder, hydraulic hose. I needed larger bolts for the 11 inch flywheel. Anyways, that all went in quite smoothly.

Now I am having issues with the starter. It didn't start right away. It has been about a month since the transmission swap.

So I have cleaned every ground i can find in the engine bay. They all got di electric grease. I added a new ground to the battery( I now have 2 grounds from the battery) Cleaned up the solenoid. I even found a motorcraft solenoid for the fender.
Every now and than the starter will free spin without engaging the motor. So like a good person i took the starter out and cleaned all the contacts and reconnected it. Still had the same issue. So i took the starter out. Found a video on youtube on starter rebuilds and went to town.

Here is the inside of the starter before i cleaned it.


end housing

brushes



bendix



So yes i cleaned up the starter. It looks like it could use some new brushes, they look quite worn. I also imagine the bendix needs to be replaced.

Anyways first time cleaning up a starter. Looks like it didn't fix the issue. It now starts nicer when it does. It used to lag a bit. It seems to happen every third time i try to start it. Sometimes when I am out using the truck it will happen the first time i try to start it. It will always engage the second time. I do not have to try several times. It seems to be the same thing. Will free spin and than it will engage on the second attempt.

So what do yall think? What shall I do? I live in a remote location and shipping is a bear. Rockauto lists reman motorcraft starters for https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo...7353&jsn=27353 115$ Canadian before shipping. It looks like it can combine with another item in my cart and be about 40$ in shipping. So for 145$ Canadian i can have a reman motorcraft starter. Probably in a week. Or shall I shop around for the bendix and the brushes? Possibly something else?

Thanks!!

 

Yes I would replace the bendix before it gets worse and wrecks the cogs on your flywheel in a spot. There are 2 brands of bendix that are good Standard and Wilson, I believe the Wilson brand is made in Canada and is usually about half price of Standard and my local parts place that handles them both claims the Wilson is just as good. The bendix are cheap, I think about 7 dollars pre covid USA for Wilson but I know higher now. I always just replace the bendix if the starter works good otherwise.

 

My skid steer with a 2 cylinder kohler had the issue youre describing, and I had issues with it getting increasingly difficult to get the bendix to kick out and then turn. too often it would barely kick and then it would just whizzzzzz in place and I replaced it, fixed that. I hear that poor battery connection and grounds may have a impact(didnt look to see if that is true or not) and wear on the internals. you say you rebuilt it. is the ground you added to the engine or to the frame, fender... etc.. you said it goes to the battery, which is good, but you didnt clarify where you put it to. If you have a 1990, that may have an older starter possibly? I dont know when the 4.9 got a PGMR starter which is gear reduction kind. The manual trans gear reduction starters are 1.4kw while the auto are 1.7kw. If yours is direct drive, it needs more juice to do the same thing, so maybe a sufficiency of the positive and grounds? just idea.

If you have a 3g alternator, you should consider a lugged ground from the ground attachment on the back to the negative of the battery , and you already addressed your fender "relay" or solenoid.. whatever lol.

is it the later design or the older "solenoid" design that ford used for years? the later design is better internally. also important to make sure the fender is grounded well to the battery, as the thing is grounded to the fender

 

The thing is it will always spin. It spins every time I turn the key. Just to be clear I only cleaned the starter and greased it. No new parts were added to the starter.
It has the old style starter. I can look at the positive wire some more. It is currently not what I would like.

Currently there is a ground( that I added to the fender) and one going down to the starter.

I actually happen to have a PGMR from a later 93+ f250 which had a small block v8. Its from the truck I got the ZF transmission from. I am going to take that apart and clean it up as best as i can and see if it will work. It is rough looking so i have little faith in it working.

 

Looks like i can get the bendix for about 22 dollars off of rockauto(standard motor). I was able to find the ford part number(E2PZ-11350-A) and i even found the Original motorcraft part on ebay. However it was going to be like 50 bucks. Wilson looks like they do not make the bendix anymore. Here is the wilson number 61-02-5410

My main concern with replacing the bendix is that the brushes look quite worn. They are the original brushes and they had the motorcraft stamped on them with the number 5037. Is it worth replacing just the bendix?
https://www.tascaparts.com/v-1990-fo...rical--starter

 

I think the flywheel is probably different so the size shape of the engaging part is probably going ot be different. But if you have a direct drive, hell, id just say go to a newer kind. assuming the swap isnt too hard(Bolts and a starter for the right trans Id assume?) Simply for the increased starting ability with less current

And based on your having a direct drive, if you have a jumper cable or a extra cable, try running another cable to the positive on the starter, quickly test my theory on the sufficiency thing ( the cable will help bring more power to it when it needs to kick out and spin)

did you check the flywheel for making sure it looked normal when you had it off?

Does a 90 f150 put the ground from the starter daisy chain to the frame between engine and fender, then continue to the battery negative? I noticed the wire where that makes contact on the frame is bare, corrosion may be set , that would make the ground from the starter have to handle the grounds that nromally pass through the frame to the battery , and any cable problems inside it from the open part may be impeding ground path. If you have a bracket that has 2 different slots for a bigger alternator, you can attach a ground to the bracket if you clean up the aluminum. That would assist a cable if it was not enough.

 

Id assume brushes can be replaced just a matter of finding, but being you have a direct-drive, that draw on the battery and the slower starts would be motiviating to me to upgrade

 

You may want to go ahead and order the brushes also beings it is already apart.

 

So i just dinked with the PMGR motor, took it apart and cleaned it up. Everything looked good. I re-greased it. This video is very through
I just hooked it up before installing it and it spun nicely! Now to install it....


---------------------------

Installed the PMGR starter and hooked up some temporary wiring. It went in smoothly. The motor started 3 times. So i consider it fixed........ (famous last words)
Now to do proper wiring to make it last.

The starting motor sure sounds different.

 

So it is installed. Motor turns over very easy!
I used Di-electric grease everywhere. used 12awg submersible pump wire for the solenoid trigger. I used the old cable which came with the starter. A few new ends were added. Marine grade ends


Starter side. 12gauge submersible pump wire

Connected to the solenoid. Make sure the positive wire is disconnected

Ground wire from the battery

Wiring. Battery Positive is hooked directly to the starter. I put a new end on the positive cable to the fender solenoid.

 

have you noticed youre using a marine battery? That is gonna have a hard time providing the juice to properly start when its already 9 years old and they are not really made to handle that demand. You need a battery sir!!!

this is an older pic but this is the size battery that it should be, 65?

If you prefer to still use walmart to source them like you sourced that marine battery in 2013, here are the new label/looks so you can spot it quick

also consider pullign the screws from that fender relay/solenoid/switch thing because the screws ground it too, so just undo 8mm and then clean up the threads a bit with some wire brush etc, helps every bit you can

 

thanks. I was aware it was a marine/rv battery. I wasn't aware it was 9 years old! Thanks! I have owned the truck for about 2 years.

So from the reading i can do online. It looks like this battery has a CCA of 680. Which based on what you showed and on what rock auto shows it great. I live near the ocean, I am about a 30 minute walk away. The temps here hardly dip below 0*C. If they do it is only for a few weeks. So i assume it should be good. The more i think about it the more i like the top posts on these marine/rv batteries. It looks like when i need to i can get a costco marine battery https://tires.costco.ca/Batteries/Pr...0RV&lang=en-ca for around 180$ canadian.

Fender solenoid has already been cleaned. Certainly helped. Now where is that 3g alternator.....

 

I do understand what you mean because I also wish there were studs on batteries, it would make additional connections and even encourage just good easy ways to check things etc etc.... But they dont put them on normal batteries, we will cry together over it

"Car batteries are especially designed for high initial cranking amps (usually 200 to 400 amps for five to 15 seconds) to start a car and for shallow (10% or less) discharges. They are not designed for deep cycle discharges. Deep cycle (and marine) batteries are designed for prolonged discharges at lower current and not for high current discharges. The plates in a car battery are more porous and thinner than in deep cycle batteries and use sponges or expanded metal grids instead of solid lead. A deep cycle battery will typically outlast two to ten car batteries when used in deep cycle applications. In warm weather, starting an engine will typically consume less that 5% of a car battery's capacity. In contrast, deep cycle (or marine) batteries are used for applications that will consume between 20 and 80% of the battery's capacity."

have you ever serviced that battery? I cant force you to put the proper battery in, you should at least consider servicing by getting some distilled water and a water bulb and putting the level to over the plates. the battery is probably low. which.. can become dangerous especially if you have a clogged vent in the caps. but please consider the right battery. that marine deep cycle has been abused hard for at least 2 years and its a senior for a battery and honestly your starter also draws more than a later truck and the battery in general is not designed to handle large demand in short time, its simply out of its proper waters (pun intended)

Plus regardless of where you live, surely you understand how the underhood heat is not the same kind of thing that battery is intended to live on while powering a boats electronics. that heat cycling is something an automotive battery is made to live up to.


So this is why Im showing a lot of concern for your battery situation, Im only 24 now as of the 13th, but in november of 2018 I stood about 2 feet from a battery (above) and pressed a starter button and the battery went boom. I am very very lucky I stood behind the fender for the tractor instead of leaning over and reaching it while standing next to the battery. I got some burns where the fender wasnt cover , some on my chest not bad, and some to my leg. ruined some jeans more than anything there.

The other battery boil over, I was using the skidsteer sitting there on that seat a foot away from a battery which started boiling over, thankfully i was close to my shed and I had baking soda on hand now since the first explosion event. i didnt get any on me but I suspect that could have went worse potentially. it ruined both cables(the neg was kinda stupid anyway), knocked out a new points and condensor, the ignition coil cracked and partially melted, the starter was ok thankfully and the switch/solenoid/relay were all okay but i had to run a new wire from the new coil to the points which I had to replace after just putting a nice set on. This skidsteer is basic K series kohler, but lets say it was my f150. That has a lot of nice wiring and electronics which probably wouldnt have liked a boiling battery. no idea the cause there, but I just share that since it was an old battery as well. at least be careful in the end all be all

 

Plus I may be a little too nitpicky here but I would suspect the stud on the positive post is insuffieicnet surface area wise for the connection that should be feeding to the starter , battery positive posts are larger than the negatives and I believe thats part of the reason. A clamp which utilizes the surface area and then goes into nice gauge wiring doesnt bottle neck

 

Wow that sounds tragic. A battery exploding. Good thinking with the baking soda.

I haven't told the whole story, the truck has been sitting that whole 2 years, the concentric slave cylinder bit the dust and it took me and my buddy quite a while to get up the energy to change the transmission. There was always something more important. So the battery has seen very little use, though it has been charged up and maintained. The truck has only been used for the last few weeks to move firewood. In that time i have cleaned all of the ground connections in the engine bay and had to deal with the starter free spinning. I also replaced the fender solenoid with a motorcraft I found. I also added the ground from the battery to the fender. I am tempted to add another one from the engine to the frame as i am not sure the one that connects the battery to the starter is adequate. It connects near the engine mount than goes onto the starter case.

I will check the water level. Thanks for the reminder.

In regards to the engine bay temps. The fastest I ever go is 60km. I also only ever travel about 25 kilometers. The truck receives very little use. It is always short trips at low speeds. It is mostly a firewood truck.


Do you have any suggestions for awesome clamp's to attach to the battery. I have mostly used those crappy ones which need to be cleaned often in my environment. Around here people make connections out of copper pipe. Clean up a piece of copper pipe and than strip your wire and slide the wire into the pipe and than smash it with a hammer. Drill a hole for what you need and there you go.