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June 12, 2005
New Starter
Today I swapped out a dying starter motor in the 87 Vanagon. From time to time, the solenoid would lock on-- that is, after the engine would start, it would just keep spinning. If I turn the ignition off, it would continue, and being "busy", it wouldn't start the engine again. Usually it would "give up" after a few minutes.
This happened every couple months, and then would be fine again for a while.
Well, it started getting worse.
In a supermarket parking lot, it just wouldn't stop spinning. It was starting to worry me and I was about to try the tap-it-with-a-hammer technique when it finally quit. Of course it then started right up as usual. It made me a little paranoid about dying for good while I was out somewhere far away, so I looked into replacements.
GoWesty has beautiful aftermarket starters from Japan, so after asking around a little, I decided to try one.
I actually stopped at the shop (I always love an excuse to visit GoWesty), as I was going up to visit a friend at Stanford. I talked to the guys there a bit about it, and was told it was a fairly simple installation. Luckily, one of the more alert mechanics noticed that the nut for the wires was too thick, and replaced it with a thinner one (more on this in a minute).
Not having decent garagespace nor the confidence to do this on my own, I went out to a friends house today to borrow his tools and knowledge. The whole thing wasn't bad, it took about 2 hours including time to play with the dog and drink coffee. Getting the old one out is fairly simple; put the van up on ramps, disconnect engine battery, pull the wires off, and unbolt it. The solenoid signal wire needs a new plug put on it, so some crimping or soldering needs to happen.
This is where it got exciting. Against my better judgement, I started the soldering while laying on my back, staring up at the wire. Sure enough, a blob of molten metal fell down and bounced off my eye. I'm pretty lucky to not be blind. The goggles were then on for the rest of the repair.
The only real trick once the wires are set it is getting the three of them (if its a manual) all stacked onto the too-short post. The main power cable is so thick that its almost more correct to call it a rod. This thing has to be coaxed into laying flush against the bottom of the post, and I can't really offer much advice here other than to practice yoga and tone your finger muscles. What we finally did was to bolt that one on tight, to have the wire "memorize" its new shape. That more or less did the trick, and the other two wires were just able to be put on over it, leaving 1 precious thread for the nut to grip onto. Luckily it bit, and the nut turned down home. The battery hooked up, and the engine started beautifully. And repeatedly.
All in all this was a pretty trivial repair, but it was rewarding for me to get a little dirtier with the engine and also have the reminder of the safety issues involved when working on a vehicle.
The GoWesty folks claimed that the new motor will last longer that the Vanagon will. Let's hope so. While this was on the fun side of things, I don't want to do it again.