The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay 12v starter question

Have a '61 - 261 in a '37 with a 12v solenoid type starter. The dash had a pushbutton with a single terminal on the back that had no wiring to it, so I replaced it with a 2 terminal "tractor type" pushbutton and everything works fine except it L00KS tacky. Can the starter circuit be wired to acomodate the 1 terminal pushbutton? The two terminal pushbutton has a wire from the large + post on the solenoid to one terminal on the pushbutton, then the other terminal on the pushbutton is wired to the "s" terminal back on the starter solenoid. As always, thanks for any help.

You could use an old Ford solenoid as an auxiliary solenoid. It has 1 term & the selinoid has internal grounding. Or you could use a starter button from a 49-54 car.

Use a 60 amp Bosch-type relay to activate the solenoid, and use the 1-wire push switch as a ground for the relay coil. Since the 60 amp relays are a little hard to find, two of the more common 30 amp relays could be wired in parallel. The pull-in winding on the Delco starter solenoid has a momentary current draw of around 50 amps, which will burn out a low-amp relay pretty quickly. Once the hold-in winding activates the current draw drops to about 10 amps.

Edit: Just looked at Ebay, and there are dozens of the 60A relays available at around $3.50 apiece. Most of them come with the appropriate wiring harness plugs, also! I think I'm going to stock up on those things, since they can also be used as fog light or horn relays, Borg-Warner overdrive controls, etc. Just search "60 amp relay" on the Ebay site.
Jerry

To answer your initial question. If the push button switch has one terminal, it is using the chassis as a ground return. Like Jerry's suggestion.
If it has two terminals, it is breaking hot.(your tractor type)

I have used the Ford relay on many Chevys. I think it's what Wrenchbender posted.