A few weeks ago my friend Bill & I entered my tiger in the So Cal TT.
Since we are in San Francisco, and the rally was in Los Angeles, the entire
trip ended up being about 1400 miles. In 3 Days. We brought along all
sorts of gremlins to share with the fellow participants, but unfortunately
most of them stayed with us. The last gremlin to strike attacked the
starter, near the end of the rally as we were going to the awards banquet
Sunday night. Fortunately, I have a stick so we just push started the car
for the rest of the rally. (NOW I knew why you needed a co-driver: to push
start your car!). We left LA at 11:30 pm, and got back to SF at 6:30 in the
morning.
The following weekend I bought a CVR mini-starter to replace the
stocker. 1 hr. to pull the stocker out, a pretty painless job. Foolish me,
I thought that since I was putting in a smaller starter with more power,
this one would go in easier, maybe be able to install it in 45 minutes.
What a dreamer I was. It seems like 1/2 the time I upgrade a component,
it's actually harder to service than the stock piece would be. Such is the
case with the mini starter. 2 bolts hold it in. 1 is very easy to get to,
the other is under the starter body. This makes it un accesible with a
socket. Which means you have to use a combination wrench/crowfoot wrench to
tighten it, all the while having a total range to rotate the combination
wrench of about 0.5 degrees, 30 minutes, 15 seconds. Between that 1 bolt,
and having to replace my ground strap (PO did not believe in them, there was
not one on the car!), it took about 5 hours to install the "mini" starter.
The good news is: 1: It actually works, so I fixed my bad starter problem.
It also sounds kind of cool. 2: I did not create any new problems (that I
know of).
So, if anyone else is planning on installing a mini-starter in a car with
headers, set aside a whole afternoon for the job. also, you may have to
grind down one of the mounting bosses where the starter motor mounts up to
the solenoid assembly. Without grinding this boss down, I had ~1/8"
clearance between this boss and the header downpipe. This is somewhat tight
for what I call the TTC (typical tiger clearance) between any 2 parts on the
car. (I swear I've seen diffraction patterns in some cases....). Grinding
down the boss buys you about an extra 1/8". Hopefully I won't kill my
starter prematurely from header heat. Do I need some heat shields in there?
On my header down pipe? If I do, what is the best bet, aluminum foil hose
clamped into place?
Sorry about the rambling message, I wrote this all before I had coffee this
morning...
Windsor
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