This whole project started out with the intention of keeping the stock Lucas starter during the re-assembly of 3747R. During the hook up of the battery cable to the starter, I discovered that the threads for the cable attachment stud were stripped from previous cross threading. This was the start of my month long journey into discovering the mysteries of permanent magnet gear reduction starters (PMGR).
With the stock starter unusable as is, I had a couple of options. First was to take the starter to an auto electric shop and see if they could replace the stud. The second was to upgrade to a gear reduction starter. I remembered picking up a gear reduction starter for a TC engine many years ago from ebay and managed to dig it out so that was the direction I took.
The first issue in fitting the PMGR starter was it's proximity to the exhaust pipe just aft of the muffler. The exhaust pipe was in fact touching the starter motor. Moving the motor around its mounting bracket, I found only one orientation of the motor to the mounting bracket that will maximize the distance of the unit to the exhaust pipe and not interfere with the mounting bolts to the bell housing. This orientation unfortunately positions the battery attachment stud right up against the oil pan. With the starter motor bolted up, there is around 1/8” to 3/16” clearance between the stud connection and the pan. Logically knowing that there is almost no chance of a catastrophic short, I was still a bit uneasy with this setup.
Still not being comfortable with the closeness of the battery connection to the oil pan, I looked into the possibility of using a generic Ford remote start solenoid to power the starter motor. Besides more consistent starts with the elimination of reduced voltage/current to a heat soaked starter motor wiring, the biggest advantage is a that there is no battery power to the starter motor cable until the start switch is turned on, or so I thought.
Unfortunately, as I later found out during my research, PMGR starter are required to have power to their motor/solenoid connection from the battery to prevent starter run on after the start switch is released. This little fact negates the “power to the motor until needed” advantage of the remote start solenoid. Since the cable to the PMGR starter motor will always hot with the remote starter solenoid, I found myself back to the original dilemma.
At this point I started looking at protective boots and coverings for the power connection to the starter.
I saw that RDE supplies a right angle connection for the gear reduction starter that he sells. The connection moves the hook up point behind the starter motor but more importantly has a hard plastic cover that protects the original stud and most of the connection. I used the diagrams from following link to perform my final hookup.
http://novaresource.org/starter.htm The pictures show the final wiring setup of my remote starter solenoid with the PMGR starter. It will be a couple of more weeks until I can test my work. I still have some final minor hook ups to complete on 3747R before starting up the car for the first time during my ownership. In the meantime, any technical additions, corrections or warnings will be greatly appreciated; may save my car from fire.
Joji Tokumoto
Fallbrook, Ca
