Club 80-90 Forums

Hello all, i've just been having a look at our starter. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what gauge the wire should be for positive and negative?

Also, I went into halfrauds today to get a new spade connector for the starter. The female spade connectors where rated at 35 amps max the guy in the shop said I'd need something much higher than that but they didn't stock anything. It sounds unlikely that I need to find a female spade connector rated at around 100 amps? But if so does anyone know where to get that?

Hopefully someone will answer because the van has been left with everything disconnected and it's not on a hill!

Cheers, John.

The spade connector is only for the solenoid, The main starter cable is a ring terminal which is on mine a 200A one (I know because I rewired around the starter and alternator the other week and the cable is 150A or more looking at it, never measured it)
A 35A spade for the solenoid should be sufficient, I don't know offhand what the draw is but the cable on mine there is around 35A - to negate the effects of any voltage drop most probably, I am not sure if that is the standard sized cable or not but was there when I bought the van.
Your gearbox negative should be rated at the same as the main starter positive. (No negative terminal on a starter normally)

E D I T:
A little research alludes to 22A initial and 11A holding current for the solenoid. (From Samba forum, not our starter solenoids specifically)

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Ah I see, I thought the ring connector was actually a negative - so that's why it sparked before I disconnected the battery! So the cable that goes from the alternator to the starter and has a ring connector on either end seems to be pretty much green all the way though. I'd like to replace that, it's only about a meter long. It looks to me to be about 8 mm2 so i'll replace that and then get a pair of ring connectors rated at around 200 amps.

I'll get the 35 amp female spade connector then.

And i'll match the negative with the positive size-wise.

Thanks for your post

E D I T: Ah so a 22 amp peak, so 35 covers this fine, thanks for this, i'm alot clearer.

When I checked mine over the other week the alternator to battery/starter terminal (Same as yours as mine is a diesel and the battery is alongside the alternator) was losing 0.2V just through the crimp on the terminal - the wires were black inside. I want all the volts I can get to go into my battery!
We could go for a full colour chart!

Yea this is exactly the process i'm going through. I'm trying to weed out all the crappy connections and green / black wiring. Every voltage counts when it comes to starting so I'm gonna try n give it all it can. I think the brushes have actually gone on my starter as it is also sticking when hot but there's no harm in doing this anyway.