Spring starter motor

Electric starter motors are very unreliable and delicate things really - there is a reason why life boats etc use spring starters
However, after a new genuine Yanmar starter died on me after only 3 months service I did look in to this as a back up (after all its only 5 minutes to swap over) and whilst great and reliable they do run at around £600 for a 3GM30 compatible one. In this instance I chose to buy two cheap throw away non genuine starters to keep as back ups for a total cost of about £100. They'll probably break in a week if ever needed but their job would only be to get me somewhere safe
 
Trident said:
Electric starter motors are very unreliable and delicate things really - there is a reason why life boats etc use spring starters
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Unreliable? Delicate? I've no experience of Yanmars, but in some 40 years of Volvo Penta engines I've never once had a problem with a starter motor.
 
pvb said:
Unreliable? Delicate? I've no experience of Yanmars, but in some 40 years of Volvo Penta engines I've never once had a problem with a starter motor.
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I'm with you on this. I wouldn't include the starter motor on my list of very unreliable and delicate things on an I/c engine. And if they are going to fail, you usually get plenty of pre-warning that something is not right.

Richard
 
In 50 years of driving old cars, I think I've had to change one starter.

A spring starter would probably be fine on my car, which (touch wood) starts instantly, but a complete waste of space on my old VP2003, which takes a bit of churning to get going, especially from cold, The starter has been fine for over 10 years in the damp engine compartment of my boat and I don't know how long before that in its original home.
 
Trident said:
there is a reason why life boats etc use spring starters
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The lifeboats in question being ships' lifeboats, not RNLI type lifeboats, and the goal is to avoid having to maintain a battery in a vessel that (hopefully) spends its whole life never being used.

That said, the handful of lifeboats I've come across have all used standard yacht-type engine panels with electric start, so...

Pete
 
Search starter motor problem just on this forum and you'll be busy all day - Yanmars are notoriously bad on this - both the switch and wiring and the starter itself - I've rebuilt several though I will admit all my boats have had older engines with well used starters - but my local repair shop for these "Power Components" has done at least 7 solenoid caps for me and always has a large pile of starters he is working on for the local yachties when I turn up to drop off or collect
 

This Chinese spring starter, after its initial use, winds itself up.

The fault on an electric system doesn't confine itself to the starter motor and its solenoid however. There's plenty of wiring and a battery able to cause the system to fail.
 
What about air start? Baudouin and Poyaud both used it. The last one I dealt with was a Baudouin 3cyl 80hp, we had to burn old echo sounder paper under the air intakes, and there was spare air in diver bottles on board. Turn the flywheel to the correct position with a bar which had a cranked end, so if you left it in the hole it would fly out, it was really safe to have a 3ft steel bar of 1 in diameter whirling about in a cramped engine room.
 
Stemar said:
IIRC, plenty of aircraft engines used something akin to a shotgun cartridge back in the day.
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More like a small brass artillery shell - I have a cut-down one on my desk as a pencil-holder :)

As I understand it, though, the charge was much slower-burning than a firearm cartridge, giving something more like a rapid stream of gas, to turn a turbine, rather than an instantaneous detonation.

Pete
 
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