Were the starter motors used on the F-100's (mine's the lowly 240ci straight-six) common to other Fords of the era (and later)? (Google was giving me the impression that the design was - but of course that doesn't mean the pinion / mounting assembly was).

Mine's developed a dead-short somewhere between power input and ground (responsible for my dead alternator no doubt, for those who were following that thread) - I'll take a better look at it later today, but I'm assuming for the moment that one of the coils has gone bad and is shorting things out.

It's got a good pinion on it though (I started stripping it down yesterday evening) and the bearings seem fine (they'd dried up, but after cleaning things out there's no appreciable wear / slop), so I'm wondering what my changes are of finding an identical one in a junkyard are - then I could just swap the coils or main body right over...

cheers

Jules

 

240/300: Same starter as a 289/302/351W.

A M/T uses a different starter than an A/T.

Thru at least 1979 (I didn't look any further), these two starters are the same.

 

Wow - quick reply! Thanks for that - it might give me an excuse to go and check out some local junkyards later today :-)

cheers

J.

 

Well, heck. :/
I guess that's the difference between tinkerers and normal people! LOL :)

I'd take it apart first thing and see what's going on inside it before
-even- thinking about buying another one. ;)

Of course if the junk yards let you go in in and look for yourself, that's
a tinkerer's dream come true tho. LOL :)

Alvin is a tinkering fool in AZ
ps- many of the pull your own parts places around here have shut
out the public after a high dollar lawsuit. :/

 

Oh don't worry - it'll get taken apart :-) Heck, I strip a lot of stuff down even if it *does* work, purely to see what makes it tick (plus it's a good excuse to clean things up rather than waiting and doing a complete resto all at once)

Not sure what the local junkyards up here are like - I know of a couple and I think they'll let me just walk in with a bunch of tools and raid what I want, but time will tell...

cheers

Jules

 

Excepting the Modular V8's, the starter drive is the same for dang near everything from 1965 thru 1996, same brushes and bearings, too.

It could be nothing more than the brushes being worn down to a nub, or the drive has stripped teeth.

It could also be that the OP's flywheel (or flexplate) ring gear is stripped in several locations.

Buying a used starter: How would one know if these parts were any better without field stripping it?

 

Yeah, I was planning on taking my meter into the junkyard with me - at least on the trucks it doesn't exactly take long to pull a starter (might be more of a pain for cars), and it'd only take a minute to dismantle and check the stator coils out (unfortunately my meter's not sensitive enough to properly check the rotor out - plus that'd take a lot longer anyway!)

I've not found any busted teeth on the flywheel - but there is a lot of wear along the front edges. None on the starter's pinion though, so I wonder if it's a replacement. I wasn't getting any noise out of the starter at all though, and would have expected something, which was why I pulled it and then found that it seemed to be shorting out. (engine would turn fine by hand incidentally, so I knew there was no prob there)

Anyway, turns out there's some insulating material present in the starter to stop the braided brush wires shorting against the starter body - one of those had worked loose in mine. I'm not sure if they were originally glued; in mine there's only friction keeping them in place, so it seems like a problem that'll happen again one day. I had the starter running out on the bench yesterday evening, so I think it should be OK now.

cheers

Jules

 

Cool. :)

On the braided wire, were there any signs they had shorted to ground?

Been a while since I took one apart but sounds familiar, while reading your
description, was picturing laying down a mess of contact cement and sliding
the insulation over it, while it's still wet. :)

Alvin in AZ

 

Hmm, no obvious burning - but then I suppose if it was making a solid contact with the starter body rather than intermittent then maybe there wouldn't be...
Not sure what to use to glue it really as it's a pretty high temp area.

Currently I'm trying to decide whether to strip the starter relay down and check/clean contacts - shame they went and riveted the thing together (I've got a rivet tool, but it's 4000 miles away right now, which isn't very helpful :-)

I'll get my battery properly checked out too, as it wouldn't surprise me if it's suffered some drama when the alternator shorted (the cells are all showing around 2V each, but even after quite a while on a charger refuse to show more than a 75% charge on a [cheap] hydrometer).

cheers

Jules