Mounting bracket shorting the starter?

[jpatti75]

Hi all,

I’m having a real head scratcher with my 1956 Firestone (S/A) electric start motor. The Delco-Remy I received with the motor has a bad armature and can’t spin the motor under compression. A friend in our chapter sent me another Delco-Remy that he tested on his Scott-Atwater 33HP (worked great) that has not been working on my end. After a bunch of testing, I have discovered that the motor mounting bracket is somehow shorting/grounding out the motor. If you remove the bracket and bench test the starter , it fires right up. While the two starter motors are slightly different models, they both connect to the motor bracket exactly the same way. I can’t see why this one would short out and the other one works just fine.

Any thoughts on what I should be looking for or how a mounting bracket could be shorting/grounding out the starter?

Thanks,
JP

[jpatti75]

Well, I swapped the starter top plate and bendix gear assembly from the original starter motor onto the replacement starter, added the mounting bracket, and voila ….successful bench test. The parts I swapped look exactly the same as what was on the replacement motor — go figure! I’m not going to question a good thing and am going to go with it.

JP

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