From: chance wolf (chance_wolf@shaw.ca)
Date: Sat May 07 2005 - 23:12:39 PDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike" <michael@tsixroads.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 9:42 PM
Subject: [MV] CUCV starter relay?
> I had to replace my starter relay today. I used a take out relay. The
old one had gotten wet and rusted. In looking at the TM I found this:
>
> NOTE
> Original starter relays on vehicles prior to July 1985 production were
> defective. The point gap inside was too small causing starter to stay
> engaged. Vehicles produced after July 1985 and the current starter relay
in
> supply system have a wider point gap to correct this problem.
>
> Does anyone know how to tell these apart?
I've gone through a bushel of those, and cooked two starters because of it.
I'm going to wire in a more heavy-duty unit now and just give up on the GM
OEM style altogether, as I just can't afford to be stuck in the middle of
the bush with my starter going nuts as I try to pry the relay out from under
the dashboard or rush off to crimp off my battery lead.
I've opened up a couple of the failed ones (two were NOS) and to me, the
relay looks woefully underbuilt for what it's trying to do, and as suggested
by your NOTE above, the contacts do in fact arc closed. Right now I'm
planning to use something like a 1985-ish Ford starter relay which is a far
heavier piece of kit, and I'll probably rig some sort of quick-pull
disconnect on the output wire in case of emergencies.
While we're here, apparently there's a known problem where the fore-end seal
(behind harmonic balancer) goes south, and starts to let liberal quantities
of oil shower all over the pass. side of the engine. Unfortunately most of
that seems to wind up all over the starter and soon works its way into
everything and loosens up all the hardware - particularly the hardware that
holds the solenoid together. I've had two different vehicles do that, and
one of them (my daily driver M1009), has gone through a couple of solenoids
after chucking its retaining hardware along the freeway over the course of a
few thousand miles, and left me in less-than-ideal locations forced to hike
it back to base/home/nearest bar to lick my wounds. I guess the solution
would be to clean everything up with Brakleen or similar and Loctite the
beejesus out of everything, or maybe bite the bullet and buy the specific
NAPA-type seal kit evidently available to address the problem at its source.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Oct 28 2005 - 22:42:50 PDT