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I recently relocated my battery to the hatch, and am running a nice 0 gauge wire from the battery to the starter motor, and then to the engine bay. My question is about the starter motor:
The starter motor has two posts, one which seems to be the 12V source and the other is the small wire that goes to the starter motor itself. Can I swap which post the 12V from the battery goes to and which feeds the starter motor?
For routing purposes, I could make the install a little cleaner if I reverse the wires on the two posts.
Nope. The thing with the posts going to it is the solenoid. When the small wire is energized (turning the key) it completes the circuit between the 2 big posts to power the starter motor.
Are you sure of that though? I checked for continuity between the posts and they are connected even with the car off. Mind you my car has been down for about a year and the starter motor was rebuilt, so maybe there is something wrong with my setup.
Thinking about it now I'm not entirely sure. But, I wouldn't try and do something weird with the wiring there. That is full unfused 12v, it's easy for it to short against something and that can be SUPER bad since there is no fuse to blow.
An old FC I worked on back in the day had the starter harness routed weird and it pulled to one side and was arcing and shorting big time. Fortunately it was being worked on and the battery was quickly disconnected.
- Your starter harness looks like it has been cooked! Especially the connector for the solenoid. Or is that oil build up?
- What posts are you trying to swap? The two large or one of the large and the solenoid wire? Maybe label the image for clarity.
** The wires do have some oil on them from a messy oil leak, and I’m working to clean everything up ***
On the Green terminal/post, there is the short (4 gauge?) wire going to the starter motor.
On the Red terminal/post, I currently have a wire going to the engine bay (alternator and battery fuse holder). I will be adding a fused 0 gauge wire from the battery (now in the trunk), based on the original wiring, this would need to go on the Red terminal.
Question: What I was looking to do, is simply put the wires on the Green and Red terminals as I thought both terminals were connected when I checked for continuity. I’m not sure if I can do this, and I guess this depends if the relay is to complete the circuit to ground or if it connects both green and red terminals.
