Originally Posted by Tofudebeest
OK, update:
I replaced the contacts and plunger about 6 months ago, and had great starter operation. Then it started acting up, and I got used to having to beat the crap out of it with to get it to engage. After I got sick of that action, I decided to bite the bullet, pulled it, opened it up, visually inspected it, cleaned it (it wasn't too dirty), hit the contacts and business end of the plunger with a dremmel wire wheel to freshen up the surfaces, patched it back together, reinstalled it and ran it with no problems for close to a month. Yay (not so fast)!
Now it is acting up again.
Symptom: click, click, click...will not engage when I turn the key. If I sit there and keep trying, sometimes it eventually does engage and start the truck up. Sometimes it takes 5 key turns, sometimes 50. When it doesn't, I hop out and have somebody else turn the key quickly and repeatedly (when somebody is available to help, including my 5-year old daughter), while I whack at the starter with my lug nut wrench. This does the job, but even that sometimes takes a minute or so. When nobody is around, I go back and forth, whacking, then trying, whacking, then trying, until it works. SHEER JOY when the weather is 90+ and I am in the parking lot of a busy store, looking like a damn idiot, dripping sweat, and running late.
The starter has NEVER ONCE been stuck on (no whirring, no noises). When it engages and fires up the truck, as soon as I release the key, it stops, as it should.
I did buy replacement brushes from Neil (RooDogs4WDSpares), but did not install them because it looks like a 5 banana job with my total ignorance on this. That and the brushes look perfectly fine and don't look like they need replacing. My grounds are good, and my alternator's voltage output seems fine. I have no known electrical system issues, my battery stays nicely charged, my glow system works perfectly...
So what's going on?
One random thought: The rubber drain nipple coming out of the starter...it is gone. This can't be it...
The felt washer, it's gone too. Also, the first time I took the starter apart, a small, flat square metal tab (maybe 5mm x 5mm, 1 mm thick) fell out, and I can't seem to find where it goes. The fact that the starter works a bunch (if not most) of the time, and worked flawlessly for over a month or so indicates that these things are largely irrelevant...I suppose...
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