On Jul 8, 9:10*am, "YukonBound" wrote:
"W1TEF" wrote in message

...

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 09:59:27 -0300, "YukonBound"
wrote:

Thanks to some dogged investigating, I've solved my starter problem and
all
works well.
I won't bore you with the details........ *but after 'the fix' was made,
the
starter jumped up and threw that flywheel around like a champ.

So what was it?

Ok.. since you asked...
This solution was in the back of my mind from the start, but I didn't want
to try anything for fear of causing problems.
I was able to turn the bendix toothed gear by hand and one way it would
raise up on a helix to the flywheel so I felt nothing was seized there.
When I pressed the starter I noticed that the bexdix was spinning
clockwise... same way as the flywheel did when I pulled on the cord.
This didn't seem right so I took a closer look at how the Minn Kota prop
spun when I put in in forward & reverse.
You guessed it...the opposite way from what you would expect.
*I had assumed that the cables leading to the battery posts were like your
normal 14-2 household wiring.
That is..... black hot & white neutral. It was the opposite.... the white
wire belonged on the + post and black on the - post.
I couldn't remember how it was connected when I re-installed the battery
...and with a 50% chance of getting it right...i didn't.
I'll mark or apply red tape to that white wire so I don't make that mistake
again.


Don, that's not uncommon, and nothing to be emmbarassed about.

Your starter is a permanent magnet motor and if the polarity is
reversed it will run the oposite direction. I see that with lawn
equipment quite frequently. When the customer says the drive won't
engage the flywheel, but operates normally on my bench, I ask them if
they had just replaced or re'installed the battery. they usually say
'yes' and I tell them they have it hooked backwards. Sometimes they
will argue with me, but when I tell them to re-ckeck the polarity,
usually they'll call me and tell me I was right. The couldnt' believe
it either.