Broken Starter?

[Joe Handley]

Has anybody ever broken the nylon plunger in the starter solenoid before?

Had the one on the Crown replacement starter in my '98 Cherokee do that yesterday or today. I held on to the OE starter so Dad and I were able to swap the plungers to make a working starter but it seemed like a pretty odd thing to break. Here's a couple pics

The OE one that's been cleaned up for reuse in the new starter

and here's the broken one.

[CAL]

That does seem weird. How the heck do you break one of those? Unless something went kittywampus...

[Joe Handley]

I'm thinking a questionable idea, poorly executed on the aftermarket. Believe it or not, you can't buy just a solenoid around here, all the parts houses carry are whole starters in either new or reman........

It started to go away when I gassed up yeasterday and was probably lucky to get home with it. We held onto the factory starter ans was able to part it out for this little project. Unfortunetly......the ###### thing broke in time to keep me from going to a RC Crawler comp!

[CAL]

I'm thinking a questionable idea, poorly executed on the aftermarket. Believe it or not, you can't buy just a solenoid around here, all the parts houses carry are whole starters in either new or reman........

It started to go away when I gassed up yeasterday and was probably lucky to get home with it. We held onto the factory starter ans was able to part it out for this little project. Unfortunetly......the ###### thing broke in time to keep me from going to a RC Crawler comp!

Of course they never break at a convenient time.

[Joe Handley]

Seems that way, atleast when I have had starting issues, it just flat quits at home! When the solenoid on the OE starter started to quit, I'd go at it with a ball peen hammer.......kinda left a large number of hammer marks in the top of the solenoid casing

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Maybe I need to lay off the forearm exercises at the gym

[Guest zebm1]

Don't have alignment issues do you? Plastic doesn't resist torsional force very well, especially if it is a "hard" plastic piece.

[Joe Handley]

Everything was tight enough it took a little "persuasion" to get the solenoid off the starter.

Atleast this failure wasn't like the battery failure I had in my E-Revo, that was a rather impressive to watch

[george 53]

Joe, YEARS ago I tried to fix a starter on a slant six Dart(68) and found out I had to pretnear rebuild the WHOLE starter just to fix the Bendex gear! Taught me a good lesson, just buy a whole NEW one!

[Joe Handley]

Joe, YEARS ago I tried to fix a starter on a slant six Dart(68) and found out I had to pretnear rebuild the WHOLE starter just to fix the Bendex gear! Taught me a good lesson, just buy a whole NEW one!

Actually, the one that broke was a new one from an aftermarket company, we had to use a part form the factory starter to get the truck back on the road!

[lordairgtar]

Where do they make those Crown parts? China?

[rickr442]

I've about had the whole course regading replacement parts over the years...

Best strategy as far as I'm concerned is to avoid (like the plague) the parts sold a the chain stores like Pep Boys and Wal Mart. Pay a couple of bucks extra to go to at least a local jobber where real mechanics buy their parts. The components my still be Chinese junk but they should be BETTER Chinese junk!

n the lesser parts tere are lesser quality plastic and nylon components used almost universally... I had a 'three time loser' starer on a TBird I had a few yeas back, and a veteran parts guy explained it to me... A further problem is chunking of metal internal components inside items like starters, etc.

Good luck!

Edited August 11, 2008 by rickr442

[Joe Handley]

Not sure where the Crown parts are made, I'll have to check the box today, the OE starter was built by Mitsubishi America here in the states.

The reason I went with the starter sourced from where I did was that it was a new part, immeadiately available, and cost less that $200 (new Mopar is nearly $300 with my Jeep Club discount!) Normally I prefer factory parts where ever possible depending on both availablity and pocket depth at the time.

I did have problems with Remans my Lebaron (alternator started squeeling within a month or two and had one starter fall apart and the replacement for that one nearly started the car on fire!) on this truck (actually that was one of a couple total Carmax repair problem, told them that the steering box was locking up so they put a reman PS pump in it that started to fail on the way home, had to take it to a Jeep dealer to get it fixed right after 3-4 trips to the CM I bought it at!!)