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Hi Phil,
I haven't been ignoring you, I've been doing some testing. And it was really cold here (it almost made -35F one morning), and I think the motor blew up on my Subaru (miserable thing. It was free and worth every dime).
The battery is fine. It will crank the engine at -20F or so.
It has warmed up now and the car started just fine. Took the starter out and inspected the solenoid. Pressing the core into the solenoid body closes the battery contacts. The resistance is a small fraction of an ohm (my DVM does not have a zero adjust). There is no movement once the battery contacts close. The body of this starter is smaller in diameter than the one on my '87 and the solenoid is squatter looking. Anyway, once the contacts close, that's it for movement either by pushing the core in or pushing the little plunger in the solenoid body with a screwdriver.
I measured the length of the core, depth of the bore, height of the brass button at the bottom of the solenoid bore, etc,etc. and it appears there is about 0.015" between the end of the core and the bottom of the bore when the contacts are closed.
I lapped a few thousands off the end of the core ( I'm better at grinding than welding...) just in case and polished the scuffing off the sides of the core. I used metal polish to clean up the sides of the solenoid bore. The core will settle into the bottom of the solenoid bore but it is not so loose that it will cause a problem.
Reassembled it all and NOTHING. Disappointing. Resorted to brute force and shorted the battery terminal to the starter terminal and still nothing. Well, excrement. It appears (DVM) that I don't have power at the starter end battery cable. I have done dumb things in the past so I'll double check everything in the morning, but still.
My wiring diagram shows a fat red wire that goes from the battery to the starter with no stops in between. Ugh.
Greg
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