Daren Stone writes
Spridgetly-speaking, the hardest thing bout
getting into a starter is disassembling the bendix (the
gear drive). On this model starter (Lucas 35G, stamped
on the side of the main body), you must compress a
*very* large spring, which I assume, is there to absorb
the shock of the starter gear slamming into the flywheel
ring gear.
NO KIDDING!! I had a dead starter, and another starter which kindda
worked on the floor, but had the ends of the ears broken off on on the
mounting plate.
Memories...
So here I am, Labor Day Weekend, and I'd had to get the Midget push-
started in the bank parking lot the day before to get home. Once in
the garage I took the starter out and saw that the brushes were shot;
specifically, the wires leading from the brushes to wherever the
wires go had broken, or rather the solder from many previous fixes
had given way. No juice, no whirr; no whirr, no bang. Yet another
occasion when I was glad that to have the large rubber overriders on
the '74 Midget's stately chrome bumpers, it gave the tow truck an
easy target for the push-start.
Once home, I took the starter apart, leaving the Bendix on the end. I
wondered about soldering the wires, and came to the conclusion that I'd
probably only be buying time before the problem repeated itself. Let's
fix it in a more permanent way.
So I walked out to the back garage and pulled the starter off the
A Series engine that I had back there. I tried to install it in the
Midget and learned that while an Austin America did use a Lucas 35G
starter, the spacing between the ears was different. It wouldn't
bolt in.
But the Austin's brushes were in good shape, and the Midget's ears
would fit... simple, take the guts from one and put in the casing
from the other and somehow make it all work. Easier said than done.
What I ended up doing was using a piece of stiff wire to make a hook,
pulling the brushes back so that I could slip the armature in between
the four brushes, and then wiggling the brushes out as I drove the
armature home and bolted it all together. It took some fiddling and
some creative problem solving to get it done, but later that night I
bolted it all into the car and went for a drive in the Indian summer
evening.
That was one of the first days when I realized that I had really
learned something about working on cars. I passed the whole day
without losing my temper, swearing, or throwing wrenches, in spite
of some really inventive weirdnesses from the Lucas parts bins.
The previous Labor Day I'd been driven to tears trying to get some
comparatively simple thing to work, cursing and flinging tools until
I gave up in frustration and disgust, the car still not working, and
now I'd just gone from one setback to the next and ended up driving
my car again the same day.
Come to think of it, maybe I'd learned more than just how to work
on cars.
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