thoyer

Glad you found the issue and thank you for posting the resolution.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the symptoms vs the root cause (not the first time my brain has had issues understanding.............)

The ignition switch supplies power to the solenoid which, when energized, pulls in to engage the starter and shorts the battery terminal to the starter windings. My understanding of the problem was intermittent slow turning of the starter which would make me think that the solenoid and ignition switch were doing their job keeping the starter engaged with the flywheel.

Is it possible that voltage drop across the bad ignition switch (and ensuing current limiting) was enough to keep the starter engaged but did not provide enough "umph" (technical term) to keep the battery to starter shorting disc inside the solenoid fully seated leading to a voltage drop across the solenoid (limiting current) to the starter windings thus slower turning?

Sorry - engineering background makes me obsess about understanding problems once a fix is found........

Tom

jforb

we'd want to take the old switch apart and see what's wrong with it, too

DONR

Well I took the original ignition switch apart today. I can see now why it was failing.
You can see where it was arcing inside the switch., but look how long it lasted.

jforb

clean it up, put it back together, drive another 50 years!