[tubman]

I'm sure you guys remember the problem I had with the rebuilt starter from NAPA. I'm here to report that all ended up well. I was able to return the faulty starter to NAPA without a lot of trouble, and ended up with a good starting car and an extra rebuilt starter.

I had a bunch of new bushings and brushes I had gotten several years ago, so I decided to go through the original starter. I went through my stash of cores, and found one marked "GOOD", which I installed temporarily. I immediately know that there was a problem with the original starter as it spun over at least twice as fast on the "new" starter than it had ever done before; also, the slight hesitation that incited this whole thing was gone. When we went through the original starter, we discovered a "cold solder" joint where one of the brushes was connected to the field coils. One side we had to apply a bunch of heat to unsolder the connection, while the faulty side just pulled out. We soldered in the new brushes, installed new bushings and tested the armature (my neighbor, who fixes golf carts) had a "growler").

I installed the new drive I had purchased on the newly rebuild unit, and put it "in stock". I am now running a used starter in the car, but since it works so well, it's a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

One thing that was kind of disappointing is that the personnel at the NAPA store treated this as an ordinary occurrence that happens every day. I'm sure that mine is an isolated case, but it still makes me wonder.