The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay 48 Chevy Aerosedan braided starter brushes' wires fried

Sheesh I put this in engines' on accident but here goes-
This is concerning a 216 48' Chevy Aerosedan w a 12volt conversion using the 6volt starter. Has never done this before... the starter keeps spinning after I let off the stomper until I disconnect the battery.
Having a bit of a problem (a few but here's the one on deck now)
the braided wires that go to my brushes have grounded and shorted out against the starter hosing on the inside. The copper contacts on the starter foot stomp sylinoid have welded together in the engaged position. I pried them apart. Happened twice and I cleaned and smoothed contacts and it did it again.

Prior to this I painted the pieces of housing, nose cone and end plate. Just now I thought to bare metal the mating surfaces continuous to the bell housing face. I also replaced the brushes and that is all.

I am scared [censored] to run it again until someone has some input. On another note I've noticed that tons of images of starter brushes haven't got any kind of insulation on their braided copper leads so I hesitate to tape mine up. Do you think that my creating a continuous ground from end to end to bell housing will fix my problem? Best regards and do take care, freezer'

ps- all four braided wires are damaged in the same manner. ANY helpful comments much appreciated. fb

I will assume that your starter 'run on' is due to the welded contacts on you starter switch. If not, then you need to address that issue before you roll out of shop.
On your other issue of shorted brushes. I don't understand how your starter turns if your brushes are grounded. Grounded brushes would not put any voltage across the starter, therefor it would not spin. Is your testing procedure correct? Starter windings present very little resistance to an ohmmeter. Is is possible to pull the starter and have it checked out by a trusted shop?

I'd be checking out the stomp starter switch, might be able to clean it up or just replace it.

So if I understand it correctly, you had a 6 volt starter running on 12 volts and you had to disconnect the battery to get it stopped? After letting off the stomp pedal I assume it was running full out with no load. I am surprised that It didn't completely self destruct. Maybe it is drawing too much current and that is why the contacts welded. The six volt starter should be spinning quite fast with 12 volts and the drive engaged. If it is not turning fast, the current on 12 volts would be excessive.

Problem solved and thank you all for your much needed input to get my old girl back on the road where we belong! The problem was the brushes' braided bare wires were left a tad too close to the starter housing after rebuild. There are four braided and bare brush wires- two are grounded with screws, two are hot and none are insulated. Protection from grounding out (arching) is strictly the routing of the leads. The two hots are connected by an insulated piece of wire which connects them together "after" the brushes. Route the hot braideds close to the central area of the housing at the expense of the negs as they don't matter as they are bolted to the end cover anyway. Be cool, fb
ps- The brush holder pivot pins are insulated with a non-metalic cup that is pressed in with the pivot pins at the time of manufacture. -fb

As a future "self protection step" you may want to slip a piece of heat shrink tubing over the problem braided wires.( and shrink it in place).
Then on reassembly, make sure theyre pulled away from any problem areas where theyve "welded" themselves to before.
The 6v to 12v is a common conversion, while still using the 6v starter.
Good Luck With Your Project......