by Skywatcher » Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:49 pm
Hi Again Dennis
Here out in farming country, the old generation farmers still had it in their heads that if an electric starter didn't crank the engine, you hit it with a hammer. Doing this on a Kohler K-series engine just broke the ceramic magnets in the motor. The problem was the battery was grounded to the grain auger frame and as the engine block rusted, the connection would fail.
I had one farmer buy 5 starter motors within 2 years at $250.00 a pop before he finally agreed to bring the auger in for me to have a look at it. what I ended up doing was to remove the engine mounting bolt closest to the battery and cleaning the paint from around the bolt hole on the engine. Replace it with a bolt 1" longer, but insert the bolt up from the underside and thread a nut onto the bolt torqueing to spec.
Next was to replace the battery negative cable with a longer cable that would reach the new bolt. Set the cable end over the bolt and secure the cable to the bolt with a second nut. The last thing to do was to design and print a decal of a red circle with a diagonal line through it over a black hammer and apply that to the starter motor. The old farmer later told me that he laughed every time he saw that decal on the starter motor, but knew to never hit the starter motor again. That auger started and ran perfectly for the next 7 years until he retired and had a farm sale. The long and the short of it is that a good ground is vital to any electrical system. All the best,
Sky
A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares.
A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of Quality.
Robert M. Pirsig. (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)