Hello, John Talley here with Partzilla.com. Today we're going to take
a little bit of time and look at the different starters that you may find on
your ATV, side-by-side, or motorcycle. And we're gonna test each one just here on
the teardown bench using just a regular battery, set of jumper cables, and this
little test lead. Now the one in the center is what you're gonna find on most
of your utility type machines, and it has everything incorporated into one
assembly. What you're looking at is the starter solenoid, starter motor, and then
it has a bendix gear that is driven into the starting gear which is typically on
your flywheel. Now the next variation on that, it actually separates the starter
motor from the starter solenoid but it still has the bendix they're just going
to interlock in that gear that's typically on your flywheel. Now the last
one still uses a starter solenoid that separated it from the motor itself, but
you'll notice that there's not a bendix on this one. This one actually operates
through a starter reduction gear and then a one-way clutch that way it can
only turn in one direction. And once it finishes, that clutch is free to spin. So
how do you test each one? Well that's pretty simple to do. We'll start with the
standard one, and I'll walk you through it. And then
we'll go on to the one with the bendix and then the one without. Now before you
start this, make sure that you have a good battery. You can do a voltage test
using a meter and just make sure it's north of, you know, twelve and a half
volts. Now make sure there's no open fuel anywhere near by 'cause as you're doing
this, chances are it may throw a spark. It's just that amount of current trying
to travel through each one of these motors. So here's what we're looking at.
That this lead here actually goes directly into the motor and through the
windings. There is no negative because the body itself is the negative side of
the motor. Now this side is typically where your starter wire is coming from
the battery. And this little guy right here is the trigger that's coming from
your ignition switch or your push button that causes the solenoid to engage
the motor, turns the motor, and then engages that bendix that you'll see down
here at the bottom. You'll actually see that your drop down and turn and then
when you release the starter it pulls back up.
You can actually test the starter separate from the starter solenoid, and
let me show you how to do that. Go ahead and carry your ground to your body, go
and connect our negative to the battery. And now keep in mind this is live now so
don't let it touch the framework of the starter itself-- otherwise us a direct
short. What we're gonna do is go directly to the starter solenoid positive and you
should hear it click. When we engage this, it's actually going to thrust the bendix
gear down and that I'll tell you that it's working. Now if we want to test just
the starter motor, go ahead and attach this to the wire that's going directly
to the motor windings. Now when we pass it through you're just going to hear the
motor turn. Now here is how you test them together. Put the positive here, that's
going from the battery to the positive post of the starter solenoid. Alright we
connect that, look: nothing happens. Now the way you trigger both is to pick up a
positive right here and all we're gonna do is trigger the side of the starter
solenoid. When we do that, the starter will spin and the bendix will be driven
down as well, so they're both gonna happen at the same time. See it? One more
time.
There you go. We've got our battery disconnected, now let's go ahead and take
all this apart and we'll put the next one in the vise and walk through it. Now
this one basically has the starter motor itself with the bendix, but it does not
have the starter solenoid attached to it. Now the one I have on here now is a used
starter, and I don't particularly like the color wire that they used for the
positive input. Green is usually associated with ground, but we'll get
over that. Let's go ahead, connect our positive since they're isn't a whole
lot of ground work to attach to, we'll use that as our trigger. So we've got our
battery hooked up, and what we're gonna do is just ground the other line and
what you're going to see is the motor is going to spin and the bendix is going to
come out. It operates on the same principles as our first one, the only
difference is the starter solenoid is located at a different location. Now to
test the starter solenoid, we do it the same way as we tested this one, but
instead of having a grounded body it actually has the positive and negative
inside the wiring harness. So to test this one, we only need to get to two
wires. We need to ground that green wire and then we're gonna send a trigger-- 12
volts-- to the yellow with a red stripe. And we're gonna do that without touching
each one is we're going to use a couple of leads to get on the backside, so we
don't run the risk of touching the leads together on the plug side. So that's
negative, there is your positive. So we've got our jumper cables hooked up
to our smaller test leads because this is going to be a low amperage test. We've
got our battery hooked up but we've got the negative held out to the side.
And all you're going to hear is just a click, and that's what we're after. Now
what that click sound is representing is that a contactor is coming up, getting
pulled into position, essentially connecting this point to this point. Now
how do I actually know that's happening? The way we're going to test this is to
use a digital multimeter and we've got it connected to the two posts of the
starter solenoid. And you'll notice right now it shows an open open circuit. That
means that those two points are completely separated from each other. And
what we're gonna do is use the battery just to trigger the solenoid and when
we do that, it's going to bring up a contactor, you're gonna hear it click, and
then you're gonna see a resistance in between these two posts. Somewhere in
between 1 and 4 ohms, it depends on how well that contactor makes a connection
in there. So we'll just hold it for a couple of seconds, let you see the meter
change, and then we'll release it. All right, it sees it. 2.37 and then it
releases. And you can hear it as well. Closed, 1.4. Open. And what that is
allowing it to do is to take the voltage from your battery side, send it over to
your starter. It's that simple. Let's look at our last starter. All it is
comprised of is just your housing, which has the negative built into the body
just like the other two, and then you've got one positive lead that will be
going over to a starter solenoid somewhere on the machine and I've showed
you how to test that. So to do a static test on one of these, we simply ground
the body, we reach in and we grab that center post, and now when I ground it it
is simply going to spin. It has no bendix
because it uses a couple of reduction gears as well as a one-way clutch on
most vehicles.
All there is to it. Well there you have it: I've shown you just the basics on how
to test each scenario that you're going to find on an ATV, side-by-side, or
motorcycle. If you need any parts for your machine, why don't you come see us
at partzilla and we can get you taken care of.
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Y'all have a great day.