After doing some rewiring and discovering my starter was no good, I purchased a remanufactured starter for my '66 Mustang. One would think this new starter would work. To my knowledge, one can test a start using a battery charger and grounding the start with the negative cable and touching the positive to the bolt that would normally have the wire attached to it in the car. After doing just that, nothing...[:@]. I took it back to the store and the could get it to turn over, but they were not sure how many amps it was taking to do it and thought it smelled a little burnt inside. I got a new one and I repeated the same test, nothing.... I'm I missing something when trying to test the starter outside of the car? Do older cars' starters operate differently?

 

Probably not grounding properly. Put the starter in, then try it.

 

How can it not be grounding properly when I am grounding the battery charger directly to the starter casing which is what touches the block that is grounded? Just curious.. My brother also has a '66 and I am going to throw the starter is his car to see if it is the starter or the wiring that I replaced...

 

Your battery charger may not be making good contact to the hot (+) or there is a coating on something, try some 400 grt sand paper on the charger leads and where they touch the starter.

However I’m going to call this as not enough amps from the charger to kick the motor over. Its 12V yeah but there isn’t enough amperage to supply the required work to turn the starter.

Instead use some good jumper cables direct from the battery and see if that helps


Gun

 

Yeah, unless you have a super duper heavy duty 50 amp charger, that little 6 or 12 amp charger is not putting out enough amps. Again, why not just put the starter in and hook it up to the battery? That way you will be sure it is grounded properly, and will be getting the full amps from the battery.