All Sorts of Starter Issues

[akcucv]

Okay, well I started with a truck with the normal broken starter bolt issue. Starter took it's self out and some flywheel teeth. I had the starter rebuilt and did not change the flywheel. Well that came back to bite me and ended up taking the nose cone out again on the rebuilt starter.

So I had the nose cone replaced on the starter and replaced the flywheel. I thought all of my starter issues were solved (Oh and i did install new starter bolts and a new support bracket). With this new nose cone is says right on it that it is a NO SHIM starter. It works 95% of the time, but once in a while it will grind like it's loose or misalligned.

To add on top of this long post, while driving today they starter enganged while driving down the highway. Unfortunatley i did not get the battery cables off in time and burned up the starter. I thought i had a short to the puprle wire to the starter. Then after reading some on here i found out it's probably the starter relay. Which relay under the dash is it? A picture would really help out since my truck is about 25 miles away from me. Sorry for the long post, just to many problems in one area.

 

[Wile E. Coyote]

Yeah. The silver underdash starter relay (mounted beside two Bosch black square relays on a bracket right behind your ashtray door) is a known problem. Supposedly the ones that the dealers and jobbers stock now are better quality ones than the OEM ones that the vehicles came with originally (and the army stocked), but after it happened to me twice in my own M1009 I didn't press my luck and custom-wired in a grossly overbuilt heavy-duty relay from some other application. Done and done.

This relay sticks on (or somtimes just comes on by itself when it gets really tired/loose) and keeps the starter pinion engaged despite the fact the engine is running and makes a mess of everything including your flex plate and starter bendix. I've fixed probably five of them and have a couple of GSA CUCVs in the yard with the same problem waiting on time to change the flex plate and do the relay mod.

Usually it's a good idea to tighten the starter bolts when you do an oil change, and check the tightness of the front (radiator-end) bracket. Generally what happens is this little bracket will loosen up, then the starter will torque and start forcing/twisting the main bolts sideways. After awhile one snaps and falls out - then the other (now taking up all the strain) snaps and falls out. It's really, really irritating. Always always use new starter bolts even if the one survivor still "looks okay" - because it won't be okay. The stress of trying to do all the work by itself will have weakened it greatly.

Another thing that happens is that oil spray from another known seal problem will get all over the starter and start to loosen up the solenoid mounting bolts. That gets ugly fast. The solenoid will then only partly throw the bendix which again makes a big mess.

Lastly, a great many replacement starters have NO SHIM written on them, but in my own experience ALWAYS put the shim back in on CUCVs.