Hi,

Does anybody know if there is a seperate part number for the red electrical insulating pad that rests underneath the contacts in the starter solenoid for the 3VZE starter? See picture below:



Mine is worn right through underneath the battery side contact, due to the whole contact rotating when I tried to remove the nut holding the battery cable on the starter when I was removing the starter from the engine bay.

If I can't buy just the pad, I'm planning on making one. If I can find a piece of that insulating material, I can use my old pad as a template, and my dremel tool to cut the new one out. Any ideas as to where I could find a piece of that material?

 

No ideas? I was thinking of using the insulating material that circuit boards are made of... if I can find some anywhere.

 

Well, just to close off this thread in case somebody else runs into this problem, after thinking about this issue a bit, I looked in an old home fuse box that I had laying around in the garage, and found that behind the bus bars was a sheet of 1/16" thick mica insulating material. Perfect! I used the old insulating pad from the starter solenoid (which is also made of mica, I believe) as a template to trace out the new pad, then used my dremel tool to cut it out. It ended up being a perfect fit.

Also, I decided to make a new motor side copper starter contact out of a piece of copper flat stock that I had laying around. It was a bit time consuming to cut and bend the contact, and to do the final shaping using a grinding wheel on my dremel, so that it is exactly the same as a new one, but it saved me $20 (Yep. That's what a starter contact kit costs here... for one side of the solenoid.) I bought the kit for the battery side, because the bolt, nut, spacers and o-ring all needed to be replaced, but on the motor side, only the contact itself needed to be replaced, which is why I decided to make it.

 

you have to be careful cutting mica, getting mineral dust in your lungs is not so healthy.

 

Yep. A dust mask is a must... especially when using a dremel as the dust it kicks up is so fine.