Starter motor solenoid is u/s

[LangleyMalc]

,Balabio will not start. Lots of volts to solenoid when you push the starter button, so pulled the starter and the solenoid is toast about 80% of the time on the bench. Pulled the solenoid off the starter and cleaned and silicones the plunger but no better. The starter motor itself works ok but can be reluctant to get going. 
seems tome that I need a new solenoid or a new starter or probably most safely both. Any suggestions and where do I get a new starter or solenoid?

[Lucky Phil]

3 minutes ago, LangleyMalc said:

,Balabio will not start. Lots of volts to solenoid when you push the starter button, so pulled the starter and the solenoid is toast about 80% of the time on the bench. Pulled the solenoid off the starter and cleaned and silicones the plunger but no better. The starter motor itself works ok but can be reluctant to get going. 
seems tome that I need a new solenoid or a new starter or probably most safely both. Any suggestions and where do I get a new starter or solenoid?

There always seems to be lots of new ones on ebay. Cant comment on their quality but they are readily available. Seems an intermittent solenoid would be fixable.I would imagine a toasted solenoid would just not work period. Kiwi Roy will have some ideas I'm sure.

Ciao    

[Chuck]

There are two things that go wrong. Bad starter or bad solenoid.  When I had the Mighty Scura in SoCal, the solenoid started sticking and blowing fuses. Mark at MG Classics had a big box of them from when he warranted them as a dealer. He told me to rummage through them and find one with a dropped magnet, take the solenoid off, and replace it on mine. Did that, and it was fine for several years until last year in BF Wisconsin. Brought it home, took it apart, cleaned, etc. Worked fine on the bench. Once it got hot, like stopping for a gas stop, though.. I'm entirely too old to bump start this big girl.

Bought one off Amazon for 60 some bucks. It *appears* to be very well made, and works fine. Fine enough that when the Bosch on the Aero Lario started acting up, I threw it onto the "rebuildable Guzzi junk" pile with tag on it and bought another Amazon special. They are cheaper than buying parts to rebuild the stock starters..

[Lucky Phil]

6 minutes ago, Chuck said:

There are two things that go wrong. Bad starter or bad solenoid.  When I had the Mighty Scura in SoCal, the solenoid started sticking and blowing fuses. Mark at MG Classics had a big box of them from when he warranted them as a dealer. He told me to rummage through them and find one with a dropped magnet, take the solenoid off, and replace it on mine. Did that, and it was fine for several years until last year in BF Wisconsin. Brought it home, took it apart, cleaned, etc. Worked fine on the bench. Once it got hot, like stopping for a gas stop, though.. I'm entirely too old to bump start this big girl.

Bought one off Amazon for 60 some bucks. It *appears* to be very well made, and works fine. Fine enough that when the Bosch on the Aero Lario started acting up, I threw it onto the "rebuildable Guzzi junk" pile with tag on it and bought another Amazon special. They are cheaper than buying parts to rebuild the stock starters..

What brand was the Amazon one Chuck, for future reference?

Ciao

[Chuck]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081SAT1I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They cost less now than when I bought them. *I don't know* if they are as good as they look on the outside or not. Time will tell.

[Lucky Phil]

32 minutes ago, Chuck said:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081SAT1I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They cost less now than when I bought them. *I don't know* if they are as good as they look on the outside or not. Time will tell.

Thanks Chuck

Ciao

[footgoose]

37 minutes ago, Chuck said:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081SAT1I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They cost less now than when I bought them. *I don't know* if they are as good as they look on the outside or not. Time will tell.

Reading the Co. info at the bottom it appears they are made in TN!

[stewgnu]

8 hours ago, Chuck said:

There are two things that go wrong. Bad starter or bad solenoid.  When I had the Mighty Scura in SoCal, the solenoid started sticking and blowing fuses. Mark at MG Classics had a big box of them from when he warranted them as a dealer. He told me to rummage through them and find one with a dropped magnet, take the solenoid off, and replace it on mine. Did that, and it was fine for several years until last year in BF Wisconsin. Brought it home, took it apart, cleaned, etc. Worked fine on the bench. Once it got hot, like stopping for a gas stop, though.. I'm entirely too old to bump start this big girl.

Bought one off Amazon for 60 some bucks. It *appears* to be very well made, and works fine. Fine enough that when the Bosch on the Aero Lario started acting up, I threw it onto the "rebuildable Guzzi junk" pile with tag on it and bought another Amazon special. They are cheaper than buying parts to rebuild the stock starters..

Ah! Thanks Chuck! I’ve been experiencing this recently- slight delay when pressing the starter button, and occasionally blowing the fuse.  It was worse when the bike had been sitting for a few weeks without use, but if I ride her more often the problem seems to diminish.  

[Kiwi_Roy]

The most common problem with Guzzi starters is lack of current for the solenoid, it would like to draw between 40 and 50 Amps.To get this current you need almost zero resistance.

The way to test your starter is to take a wire from the solenoid and touch it on the battery, if it responds to that then its another fault. A word of warning, make certain that the bike is in neutral or on the centre stand so it doesn't launch itself.

See Stewgnu's post, thats typical of too much resistance the solenoid sits there drawing not quite enough to pull in 20+ Amps

The easy way to get around this is to provide a direct feed to the starter relay, this will send up to 40 Amps to the solenoid guaranteeing it will pull in.

Cleaning the ignition switch and sprucing up the relay socket may get you off the hook for a while.

[Chuck]

23 minutes ago, Kiwi_Roy said:

The most common problem with Guzzi starters is lack of current for the solenoid, it would like to draw between 40 and 50 Amps.To get this current you need almost zero resistance.

The way to test your starter is to take a wire from the solenoid and touch it on the battery, if it responds to that then its another fault. A word of warning, make certain that the bike is in neutral or on the centre stand so it doesn't launch itself.

See Stewgnu's post, thats typical of too much resistance the solenoid sits there drawing not quite enough to pull in 20+ Amps

The easy way to get around this is to provide a direct feed to the starter relay, this will send up to 40 Amps to the solenoid guaranteeing it will pull in.

Cleaning the ignition switch and sprucing up the relay socket may get you off the hook for a while.

Ya know, Roy.. I did the startus interuptus following your most excellent directions..including cleaning up the ignition switch and relay socket.

After that, I did the direct feed from the solenoid to the battery trick. 15 times in a row. No issues. Cranked instantly every time. Fixed. So I thought.

Until I took it for a ride, was 20 miles away, and it blew the fuse again.  That's when I bought the Amazon special.

[Lucky Phil]

44 minutes ago, Chuck said:

Ya know, Roy.. I did the startus interuptus following your most excellent directions..including cleaning up the ignition switch and relay socket.

After that, I did the direct feed from the solenoid to the battery trick. 15 times in a row. No issues. Cranked instantly every time. Fixed. So I thought.

Until I took it for a ride, was 20 miles away, and it blew the fuse again.  That's when I bought the Amazon special.

Ha, you fell for it Chuck. It seduced you and when you felt all warm and happy it grabbed you by the balls. It is Italian you know and a man of your experience should have known.

Ciao

 

[Kiwi_Roy]

It could be your solenoid was jamming Chuck, in that case the fuse would have to take 40 Amps on a sustained basis.

I hope you upgraded the fuse to a 20 Amp one

If the solenoid is unable to slide the gear into mesh and close the main contact a 15 Amp fuse will blow in less than 1 second

You can check this out for yourself by taking the large cable off the solenoid, this simulates the main contact not closing, even though the solenoid pulls into place the second high current coil stays in circuit.

Note: its not just Valeo starters this applies to, The old Bosch, and the new Chinese starters currently used by the factory also have two coils Im willing to bet the ones sold on the internet also have the same 2 coil arrangement.

I do wish Guzzi would show this on their diagrams.

[Kiwi_Roy]

Heres a diagram I did years ago when I had a 2001 VII Sport

The red dashed line shows how a 2001 VII Sport was wired from the battery, through a fuse then direct to the 30 terminal of the start relay. that bike never suffered from Startus Interruptus even when the ignition switch was so bad it started dropping out the ECU. Only 100 milliamps ran through the switch.

You can check this on Carl Allison"s 1999 VII Sport

But then along came your bike in 2004 and for some reason the factory ran the wire up to the Ignition switch and back, big mistake, look at those wimpy wires going from the connector up at the front of the tank to and from the switch this was enough to seriously restrict the current.

Check this on Carl's 2004 VII Sport Catalytic

The Timing Diagram shows the magnitude of the current through various parts of the starter, the narrow pulse at the left is only 15 - 100 milliseconds wide, the more current you can cram into the coil the better.

Actually I have a theory - The factory don't know how much current the solenoids draw. If you take your trusty multimeter and place it in series with the solenoid it will tell you around 10 Amps because the high current pulse is so quick the meter is unable to capture it. So of course Luigi allows a little bit of a margin and uses a 15 Amp fuse. This is confirmed by all the Guzzi schematics that only show one coil in the solenoid. Obviously the factory are puzzled by this, if you look at a modern diagram they don't even show one coil but something like a black hole.

If you take the time to measure the solenoid coil you will find measuring from the spade connector to chassis it measures less than 1/4 Ohm. One coil measures just one 1 Ohm to chassis but the other coil in series with the motor is only a fraction of that.

All Guzzi starters are similar, doesn't matter what brand you pick. The second coil that guzzi chose to ignore is over 4 x as strong magnetically as the one they provide for. 

You don't have to re-wire the bike but you will need to keep the ignition switch in top shape.

Later model Guzzi's like a Norge also run through the ignition switch but they have the switch mounted to the chassis so the wires are more robust.

The Breva is another bike that seems to suffer, the fix there is just to provide a direct feed bypassing the ignition switch, It doesn't change the interlock because the relay coil feed is still switched. Relaying signals from one circuit to another is what relays are good at.

Moto Guzzi - making Electricians out of riders since 1921

 

[Kiwi_Roy]

Heres a couple of pictures of a solenoid, a Bosch in this case but the Valeo or the Chinese one is similar. Note how the long tail has 2 wires

Someone came along and interrupted me in the middle of counting turns, I believe both coils were probably 300 turns. The heavy gauge coil is on the bottom so it's thicker and heavier for the same number of turns. Anyone care to check my counting?

I only have a British Standard Wire Gauge from my days as an apprentice.

[LangleyMalc]

Mine was blowing the main 30A fuse if you held the start button in.  I then tried bypassing the wiring with a jumper direct to the solenoid but still no joy. Then with it off checked the solenoid and the motor separately. Motor was fine but solenoid u/s but got hot and the plunger was sticky. This was a Chinese replacement from about 8 yrs ago. Looks to me like the solenoid dries out and sticks when stood for a while  and then eventually  cooks the coil in the solenoid. 
so off to Amazon for a $74 replacement. Cheaper than going to a starter rebuild guy.