I have the engine sitting in place, and am getting close to firing it up. I am very confused about this positive ground wiring, when I tried it the way I was told and the siloniod started welding and got hot. I have the POSITIVE side of the battery going to the bellhousing bolt for ground. The Negative side of the battery going to the battery side of the silinoid then the other side of the silinoid goes to the starter. when I press the button on the silionoid, it bumps over for a split second then gets hot I really need advice on how to make my engine run on the frame from a switch and starter button. this is my first 6 volt application, see the pictures Thanks in advance for any help
Show solenoid...if standard '37-51 Ford type, oriented as though screwed to firewall over starter with button down, it should have cable on side toward center of car to battery and one on outer side down to starter. Hook a small wire to the single terminal and ground it, if pos ground touch to pos term on bat. It should click and start cranking without drama. If not, you may have wrong solenoid, the later sort expecting hot wire rather than ground to crank.. From there, you only really need a wire from bat to your coils to run it...need for a resistor depends on what coil you have, and for a short run you can ignore that issue. Pos vs Neg ground...only thing you need to know for that is just hook up battery opposite to what you are used to. Everything works like you are used to, just terminals are switched and generator flashed to polarize it. The stuff on a bare bones rod does not even care, actually...
You ARE grounding the small terminal on the solenoid to start it rather than running 12v to it right? Do you know that the starter is good?
Maybe try hooking the battery directly to the starter with a jumper cable thereby bypassing the solenoid to be sure the starter turns...
Thanks Bruce, I must have all later model solenoids, still seems to have a heavy spark, and not turning over. I will try to test the starter, if I take it off, is it easy to bench test? Thanks Robbie
Just use some jumper cables, 1 to the bolt and 1 to the case. Hook the cable to the starter first so the arc doesn't booger the threads on the starter bolt.
You do know that 6vrequires twice the amp flow of 12 v? Looks like those battery cables are to a 12 v application. You need 1 gauge or larger cables. Also with all that new paint you could have less than optimum grounds adding more resistance to the circuit.
You may have the wrong solenoid. Check to see which terminal is grounded. You may need to reverse your connections.
Can't tell from your picture whether the solenoid is bolted to the frame or not, with a modern solenoid that needs voltage to energize it needs to be.
I believe you have the wrong kind of solenoid or you wired it wrong. I made the mistake of installing my 6V Pos Gnd solenoid upside down once and it did the same thing you describe. When it was upside-down the large wires were installed backwards and when I hit the starter switch it caused the solenoid to self-energize and not shut off. Without getting deep into electrical theory (or positive versus negative ground issues) there are basically two kinds of solenoids, one triggered by ground and another triggered by the opposite pole. Ground-triggered solenoids have to be installed properly to work. As far as the rest of the wiring, I found it helpful to simply ignore whether the car was positive or negative ground because the only real difference is that the battery goes in backwards, everything else is the same.
Difference in noids is in grounding path...early Ford uses insulated/not grounded base, and grounding small terminal gets it going. Ground works with whatever the ground is, pos or neg ground doesn't change things there! Most Nonford solenoids are grounded base, and small terminal needs juice from hot side to light it up. Most of those have 2 small terminals, the extra one feeds full voltage (no resistor) to coil during starting. Correct placement of the 2 bat cables matter, because the one meant to go to bat powers the hot side of the coil thing inside the noid. If you need to check out what does what without flames and smoke, you can cycle the things with a 9V battery.
Oh by the way, once you get it figured out with positive ground, the wire from the ign switch your to the Neg. terminal of the coil. The Pos. terminal gets wired to the points terminal on the distributor. The amp gauge also is sensitive. If it shows a discharge when running, swap the leads.
WELL I know I have 3 good starters now, my problem has moved to the engine, IT IS STUCK! IT HAS BEEN SITTING FOR 15-20 YEARS. would a stuck engine make the starter and solenoid act funny? I tried putting the trans in gear and rocking the tires to loosen , but no luck. I took out the plugs and sprayed some penetrating oil into each cylinder, will let that soak overnite, take another wack at it tomorrow. Any ideas on freeing up this motor?
Use ATF to soak it. Do not use electricity to turn it over! Use a long breaker bar and put a bit of tension on it until it moves an 1/8 of an inch, then go back an 1/8 and so on back and forth, going a bit further each time. Eventually it will turn over. Must soak it in ATF or MMO first though. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I find taking a look at the original wiring diagrams helpful when working out the wiring. I use the F1 & F100 truck diagrams as the bases for most of my wiring, but an earlier year might be simpler for the basics. The 1940 diagram shows the ground type starter solenoid with a pushbutton that completes the ground.
With a stuck engine and the starter energized things will get hot real quick. The solenoid is probably the weak link otherwise the cables would start to burn.
het,just got a buick ,38 ,sitting 25 years .i filled up the cyl.,with diesel,and let it sit for a couple weeks,then some laquer thiner.poured the carb full of diesel,and put a couple qts in the crank case.like said forward,and back .it went a little farther every time.i had my wife tow me around the yard in third awhile.emptided it out.new oil new gas.even the accel.pump started working.lota smoke,and lifter makin noise.another oil change and theve all went away.good luck
The 59AB in my garage find 32 sat for 55 years! I pulled the heads, oiled the cylinder walls, put a new oil pump in it just to make sure. Then I manually used a breaker bar to turn the thing over, making sure none of the valves were stuck, etc.. Then I put the heads back on, left the plugs out of it and turned it over with the starter quite a few times - wanted to make sure it had plenty of oil pressure before I actually started it. I also put a compression gauge on each cylinder before I put the plugs in - the valves and rings seemed okay . . . as I felt compression even at 'breaker bar speed' and the gauge showed it. Good news . . . Put in a new set of plugs, new magneto, new wires - cleaned the carb out with WD40 and a air nozzle, lubricated the carb linkage and hit the starter. Damn thing sat there and idled just like it had been waiting to start for the last 55 years. As long as your engine was correctly built (not frozen when it was put together due to clearance issues or something like that), then you should be able to get it going. Flatheads are really simple engines - with just a bit of prep and care, they love to run. When mine first started, smoked quite a bit - rings were probably stuck or gummed up a bit. I ran it with non-detergent oil for a few hours - the smoke kept getting less and less. I then changed the oil to Mobil 1 and it has been working like a charm. There is a little bit of typical flathead lifter noise (heck, I didn't even pull the intake to see if it happened to have adjustables). Other than that, runs really nice, starts every time and has 55 lbs of oil pressure when cold . . . about 40 when hot. I wish you luck, if you continue to have problems, feel free to ping me! B&S
Also, in case you didn't know . . . that Harman Collins dual-coil distributor requires that the plug wires NOT be ordered the same as a stock crab-style distributor. On original Harman Collins caps, they were renumbered with the new sequence (numbers were melted into the cap). If you don't know the wiring sequence, just ping me - will take a picture of an original cap. It is easy to figure out, just go back and forth across the rotor (180 degree change for each fire) and it will make sense.
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