HDJ81: 24v to 12v starter conversion (2 Viewers)

[TuffMudder]

Mudder,
Sorry about the late repply. I have been extremely buisy with a newborn on the way. In the 3rd point of your last post you list:

Thats awesome @FlyAddiction! Congratulations!

 

[TuffMudder]

Mudder,
In the 3rd point of your last post you list:
"Main battery (-) is grounded to the body, engine block and the Auxillary Power box"
I did not ground the main(starter) to my auxiliary fuse box but i did connect the aux - to it.

Ahh, sorry, just a misspeak on my part. I connected the starter battery neg to the aux box negative as well.

Mudder,
Below you will find a pictures of what i connected to the main(starter) +. The first picture shows what was already connected to the passenger side battery + and the second picture shows the little box that was connected to the drivers side + that i extended to the main +.

That answers my final concern! I couldn't find mention of extending the small box to the opposite battery. I was sure it was a positive so i went ahead and moved it, but was still wanting reassurance that I hadn't made a mistake.

Was that a typo on the little box? You said you moved it from the drivers side + to the main +, but i thought your drivers side (RHD) was your main? I found that box on the passengers side and extended it over to the main + which i'm hoping is what you meant.

 

[TuffMudder]

One other question. I ended up with a lot connected to main +. I have:

Alternator
Starter
Fused links
Isolator run from the auxillary +
The 14 gauge wire that was on left hand side battery that you said in your write up to extend to the right hand side (main) +
I had a second positive (coming out from under the passengers side battery box and is the third pic in the original post for this thread) connected to the small box on the passengers side that was extended over to the drivers side (main) +. I had removed that box so this unknow positive was extended over on its own

That's 6 wires total (thought the fusible links and the green wire extended over are small. It ends up looking like

Is that connection going to be ok?

 

[TuffMudder]

Well, finished all the connections and triple checking them. I have power, but when i go to to start it, i just get a single click from the starter

 

[TuffMudder]

Removed the starter to test it and it works fine. I think the ignition wire is working and causing it to click, but it's not getting direct power from the battery. I'll take a multimeter tonight to check continuity of all the cabling to see if that's the issue

 

[FlyAddiction]

make sure your bluesea 5511A is set to the on position

 

[TuffMudder]

That i had checked and it is on.

 

[TuffMudder]

I had two leads swapped on the blue sea. Corrected that and it started right up. I still have a lot of pieces i removed for the conversion to put back on, but as far as i can tell, the conversion itself is complete

 

[alexandruast]

After conversion, I found out that the new starter will eat through the starter relay contacts pretty fast.
Symptoms are clicking and no cranking, intermittently. Sometimes it works for a few starts, then suddenly you get only a click when you want to start it. Usually, it fixes itself after a few retries. You get more clicks than cranks the hotter it is. This makes perfect sense since the relay contacts pass less current the higher the temperature.
The new 12V starter is considerably heavier than the 24V one, and my logical assumption is that its action is also harder on the amps.
Tried cleaning and realigning the contacts, and it worked for a few days, but then the problem started again.
The fix was rather simple:
- Took the wire bridge out of the combiner plug (for the required relay negative after conversion)
- Plugged the connector back into the combiner brain
- Installed the combiner relay back onto the car
- Used the awesome and beefy combiner relay M8 pins to drive the starter plunger through an 8AWG wire with a 50 amp fuse
Problem solved forever!