I bought this powertorq starter for my 430 Lincoln motor 14 months ago. Starter has been getting weaker the last 2 weeks. So I checked the alternator and charging system, was good. Switched the battery with the one from my pickup, no better. I removed the starter and hooked it up to the batter with 12.9 volts in it. Still would click the solenoid and spin the starter very slowly. I then took the end of the back of the starter motor and found the armature burnt to a crisp. Power master guarantees it for one year. My luck it lasted 14 months. I'm going back to the stock ford starter.
For me, aftermarket starters are only good for drag cars or maybe somebody that has a clearance issue in their engine bay. That particular starter you have is just a modern day starter that was designed for a smaller engine and powermaster made a new face and and gear to use it on whatever they could sell it for. Turning over a heavy rotating assembly of a 430 lincoln is not what it was designed to do.
I have installed Powermaster starters in everything from 7.5:1 to 15.5:1 compression engines, and have yet to have one fail. This is the first one that I have heard of die. I am having trouble contrasting your assertion with my experience.
It may have been defective or there is something else at play. I have one on my 455 Olds (14 years old), my flathead and my Hemi Desoto. No issues with them at all. I would call them, they have a good rep and will likely want to protect it.
How are your grounds? If the ground brushes are worn more than the positives that will point you in that direction. That starter (Nippon Denso) is the best starter on the market and pretty bullet proof. After 40 years in the auto electric rebuilding business when Denso starters go bad its usually because of voltage drop (high resistance) in cables or grounds. Pull the three bolts on the triangle shaped solenoid cover, if the contacts are heavily burnt that points back to voltage or grounds. It could be a bad starter, but I would start from square one and check everything before installing another.
There is no way that that armature and commutator are only 14 months old unless there is something seriously wrong. Or it was seriously abused by cranking for long periods of time time after time until the battery went dead. Do the fields show signs of the armature dragging on them as that armature looks like it has been dragging on the fields. A commutator in that bad of shape usually has a hundred thousand miles or more on it. That is is a lot of wear. From the looks of things it almost looks like someone bought it, swapped the armature out of a bad starter and put it back in the box and took it back for a refund. What does the rest of it look like? what do the brushes look like, are there marks on the fields from dragging, is the end frame loose on the bearing?
I'd have to do some real digging in the shed to find a starter with an armature in that bad of shape. It just flat doesn't look like a 14 month old part.
If Powermaster won't do anything for you, rebuild it yourself. You might be surprised how well it would work with a good scraping of the carbon from between the commutator contacts, polish them up with some 240 grit, and installing new brushes. If that bearing is bad, take it to your local bearing supply joint and get a replacement. Industrial Bearing in Carroll or Bearing Distributors in Omaha will have it. That crap between the commutator contacts is what is shorting and causing a high current draw.
That one would need to be turned on an armature lathe or lathe and then have the mica cut. If you just hit it with some sand paper and use a razor saw to cut the mica it will be too uneven for decent brush contact.
I went to a late model magnet factory Ford starter. Smaller than the old style and works better IMHO. Cheaper than aftermarket, too.
I have had better luck with the Hitachi style of starters. And mine was on a daily driven 63 bel air, winter, spring, summer and fall. For 11 years. I’ve never had good luck with power master anything though.
43,000+ miles on my Falcon since put the more powerful engine in it. Powermaster starter, Powermaster alternator. Not one issue with either.
I can say the same about the cheap rebuilt crap I got from O'Reillys, too. Anecdotes don't mean a lot.
At what point do anecdotes become data? I have installed over 60 of this brand of starter, not just one, or two.
And you've followed them all? pretty impressive. Apparently a few other guys have had problems. with them. Might be installation issues, though. I like to use parts that I can find replacements for easily, when possible.
They are all my customers, so yes, I follow them all. I am not some rando corner garage that chucks parts at cars. When someone pays for a build, or buys something that I have built, or receives a recommendation for a part from me, they get something that I guess other shops don't care to do. That is support, and, on the rare occasion that something goes wrong, either I fix it, or give the customer their money back. The choice is up to the customer. With the sole exceptions of the few customers that have passed on, and the handful of cars that have left the country, I regularly see and hear from my customers. I even have good connections with the people that are the new owners, in the case that they were re-sold. I had one visit me a week ago Thursday, with a Powermaster starter. I was visiting another this past Sunday, who also has a Powermaster starter.
I have a couple ot Powermaster xs torque starters and thankfully no issues, but the installation instructions worry me somewhat as the amount of cranking allowed is something like 20 seconds with a 5 minute cool down, or terrible things will apparently happen. By comparison I have a stock gm mini style starter that was not new to me that I have abused the hell out of for the last 20 years (there's something in the off topic induction system that defies repair, not that I've tried to much!) and it just keeps going. Hope I've not just jinxed it!. Chris
I bet if you read the owners manual for the car that the OEM starter came in, you'd find the same warning. But bigger electrical motors/generators/alternators seem to be better at dealing with heat than smaller ones. Something about the laws of physics.
^^^^ Jim is correct. Heat is the enemy of all things electrical and the more power you pack into a small space, the more heat will be generated. This particularly true of motors as anything that impedes their 'normal' operation will cause them to draw more current in attempting to operate which translates into yet more heat. This looks like a case of either poor grounding or serious abuse, maybe both. That commutator will need to be turned on a lathe and re-undercut between segments, then checked for shorts/opens.
UPDATE. I called power master and talked to a very professional guy. After I told him how the starter kept getting weaker and weaker, he said I could send it to him to rebuild. He said the cost would be about half the new cost. I asked him if I did anything wrong to cause It to fail. He asked me about cables and battery location. I told him it's behind the front seat. New welding cable for both cables. Then he asked me if I ran both cables to the engine. I told him no, the ground was ran to the frame. He said the frame is not a good conductor and results in low voltage at the starter. It does make sense, because even when I first installed it, the starter was slow to crank the engine. So I ordered a new one just like it from speedway and will have it tomorrow. I am going to send the old starter to be rebuilt as a side note, a stock starter will not clear the exhaust manifold.
I fried a mini powermaster starter on my hemi and called powermaster. i talked to John Babcock who was in the shop at the time, and luckily he was just getting into hemis, so i educated him as best i could. He said send it and ill take a look. Completely rebuilt it for $99 bucks. He is now either president or vice president. Good company, i think they will stand up on their product
I'll disagree with that statement. There's plenty of vehicles out there with grounding through the frame/body structure (many OEM) that don't have this issue. One thing you may need to look at is cable size which you haven't mentioned. As cable length goes up, so does voltage drop AND as current goes up, more drop also. I'd consider 1/0 as a minimum, 2/0 would be better. Also make sure you have solid wire terminations and clean, bare metal connections everywhere with adequate-sized fasteners; I'd use 3/8" bolts as minimum. Attach to the main structure, not a bolt-on bracket. A 4% voltage drop can easily add 20 amps additional load, all else being equal, and 4% is considered acceptable.
He mentioned welding cable for leads. My thought would be the crimps, and if there’s a ground from the frame to the engine.
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