[AT] Farmall starter switch

[charlie hill]

Dean, thinking back to my boyhood and driving my uncle's and my 
grandfather's Farmalls, I never remember being
able to pull the starter ring gently.  It always required a fair amount of 
pull to get the starter to engage.  I guess they
were all burned in pretty badly.  With that said I'm going to suggest to you 
that you give yours a firm tug because
electrical connections need to be made quickly and firmly so that you don't 
get a lot of arching which is what burns
the connectors up.   You'll never see an electrician or electrical lineman 
slowly and gently close the lever on switchgear
with a light tug.  He throws it in and there's a reason for it.  I'm not 
saying you should abuse yours but when you pull the
ring you need to do it with purpose and not to prove how easily it will 
start.

Just my thoughts and suggestions.  I'm not meaning to be critical.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dean Vinson
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 10:11 PM
To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group'
Subject: Re: [AT] Farmall starter switch

Been using the Super M quite a bit lately, and sure enough, the difficulty 
starting returned pretty quickly.   I'd pull the ring and just nothing would 
happen, no click, no sound, no sense that it was trying to do anything. 
That didn't quite make sense to me, assuming the starter pinion gear was 
locking up in the ring gear teeth...seems like I'd be able to hear or feel 
some indication of that.  Then I noticed that the tractor would start if I 
pulled the starter ring harder, or jiggled it around a little.  Over the 
past several days that pattern became very consistent... no response if I 
just pulled the ring normally, but it'd start every time if I pulled hard 
enough or wobbled the rod a little while pulling hard.   So, back to my 
initial theory about the switch contacts themselves being worn down and not 
making clean contact any more.

Thanks to the magic of the internet and credit cards, Bates Corporation sent 
me a new switch.   I put it on tonight, and the tractor started immediately 
with just a gentle tug on the ring.  So now I'm thinking it must have had 
both problems:  Poor electrical contact inside the switch, plus banged-up 
ring gear teeth interfering with the starter pinion.   I'll see how it 
behaves as time goes by, with that new switch on it.

By the way, I was impressed with Bates Corporation.   In addition to the 
switch I decided to replace the drawbar, since the one on the tractor was 
original and the holes were seriously oblonged and worn at both the front 
end where it attaches to the tractor and at the implement end.   Never 
bothered me enough to do anything about it when the tractor lived in my 
suburban garage, but now with regular use I wasn't happy with it.   I've 
looked at new drawbars before on the OEM Tractor Parts website so figured I 
could get one there, and the starter switch as well, but when I went to 
their website I saw that they just recently went out of business.   So I 
browsed a couple of other options before finding Bates' site.   Their system 
emailed me an immediate confirmation of my order, and then about 18 hours 
later I received a shipment notification email with a tracking number, and 
about 18 hours after that the new drawbar and starter switch showed up at my 
house.   They weren't the cheapest source but I'm happy with the service.

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio

> ...The spring-loaded copper contact plate inside the switch and the
> copper post on top of the starter motor are both all chewed up where
> they come into contact when the switch is pressed.   I assume an
> electric arc occurs when I make or break that connection, probably
> boosted quite a bit by the tractor’s 12-volt conversion, and over time
> those arcs have removed enough material that the contact plate
> simply doesn’t reach the copper post any more so the starter
> motor never receives the “go” signal.
> ...
> Got to thinking, "That might just be a bit too easy," so I went back
> out, reconnected the starter cable to the battery, and touched the
> other end of the cable to the bare post on top of the starter motor.
> Big sparks but no response from the starter motor--so my theory
> that the switch simply wasn't making contact appears to be incorrect.
> Time to take the starter motor off, but that's a task for another evening.
> ...
> Gentlemen, you hit the nail on the head with the idea about rocking
> the tractor... Put  the tractor back in 5th gear and rocked it some
> more to rotate the ring gear a little, put the starter back on, hooked
> everything back up, climbed up, switched on, pulled the starter rod,
> and the tractor fired right up like nothing had ever been wrong.




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