Hey guys and how's it going on a previous video. I did this gilson snow blower that we got from the free pile on the side of the road and it recovered very nicely, but the electric starter. When we went to go use, it was blowing flames and smoke out of it. So i figured maybe we'll go, make a separate video, we'll tear this thing.

Apart see what happened to it possibly be able to fix it, not sure, let's go find out so previously, when we put power to it, it kind of shot sparks out of where the button was. We took the switch box apart. The ground wire was not attached. It's actually missing the ground.

Lug is where you plug in the ground. Lug was missing altogether and it just had the uh neutral and the hot there's nothing connected. So i think what was happening was this was dancing around possibly arcing off of one of these two. So we cured that put power right to these two tried it again and it's.

It still was drawing a lot of power and it kicked the breaker off on the breaker panel, so it was drawing a lot of energy. I still don't know what this is. I don't know if it's a rectifier or what that produces or comes out of it. I've never seen one of those and then this is just the power switch that continues the path onto the starter.

Let's crack open the starter, because the starter was still even after. We fixed that the starter was still failing anyway, so it was grinding real hard. It didn't even have a spark plug in it, so it wasn't like it had compression that it was trying to fight against. I would suspect that we probably have a set of brushes going in and again.

That is just a guess: let's see, if we can start opening up, maybe we'll pop it in a vise to hold it and we'll get the caps off see if we can open up the ass end of it, the brushes just popping out of their sockets. It's four, it looks like one of them is cooked into the housing that one right there. So it's experiencing some issues, let's see if we can get some back out of the way, so it was missing. Part of the phase looks like maybe crank down on it too long and it overheated it stop cooking.

I don't know if we can get that to free back up again, let's go take a peek at the rest of it yeah. It's like definitely looks like it's been shooting some fire down inside there too. Actually we're not going to get that out of there without the the rest of it coming off. We have the uh starter gear on the other side, which is keeping it from coming out.

This assembly not allowing it it's got a roll pin on it all that stuff should come off. Let's go tap that out of there and we'll see what the top end looks like see. If that she sounds a little on the the growly side. Actually, i wonder if we can get the case off there, you go okay, lower the ridge, raise the water right yeah.

I don't see anything that is that's your metal. You never know which one if you have any of these, that are burned out too, give a quick look. I'm just gon na see. If i have any breaks you can tell it got hot in this end, but i don't see any baking of the windings yeah.

Let's concentrate on seeing if we can get that brush to free up and move again, maybe we can clean the socket up once we get it out of there. I don't know what the best way to get all that back together too. What if we can get this whole assembly right out of here yeah, i wonder if the whole thing will come out that way, we'll be able to push the brushes back and get it onto the starter and then get this cap back on top of it. If it's bolted through, that's not going to happen, there's no way to uh re-bolt those can we if we go to assemble it, actually we can assemble it.

This can go on. First, we could push the brushes back right then put the housing back over it and then put the top on there. We go, we got it, we got to figure it out. Let's go see if we can fix that.

So that's the one. That's stuck, i got tie wraps holding the other ones out of harm's way. Just so we don't have to kind of wrestle with them. I think if we can get behind it with a pick, i don't there's room there yeah.

That was hard. I expected a bit more of a fight than that right come on see if we uh clean up the the welding that happened to it and then now, if you can see it on the side of the plastic here, like a dentist yeah, i just think somebody Laid on the starter a little too long and cooked it, but if we can get the brushes seem like they have more than enough meat still on them. You know it's not like they're all very burned up and they kicked out and turned sideways, which i've seen happen before. Try it out the spring, see if we can get to move, i actually think it'll be okay, so we are going to have to assemble it.

Like i said from the top down, though, i would think it probably stays right fairly close to it. It's probably right about there where it needs to ride. You want to do anything else to it. We can't really put any lube or anything on it.

There's electrics going through them, so i would think this is more like a bakelite or a plastic, and i don't know if we can start when we go to assembly. Can we leave the tie wraps in? I think we're gon na be able to get down far enough trying to figure out what we can do to hold the brushes out. While we we put that in then something to remove later got ta contemplate. Let's go uh work on this part of it.

Okay, get the guts off of it and we'll clean up the armature. So you can tap that pin out moving i'm going to lean on this side, so it doesn't want to lift up anymore, pretty great down on the vise yeah. It's got a lot of bounce to it when i'm hitting it actually got to kind of support it like that and hit it. How am i going to do that? I want to hold a little bit more room in the vise there.

It goes i drop it. I dropped it anyway, but i see it. Let's get that off the gear looks okay. I should go get this whole assembly off and that should come off a little dry.

There huh leave the rest of it. Let's go clean. Some of those surfaces - i'm gon na, go clean that up a little bit scotch scotch brite yeah scotch white. It's one thing about old stuff, especially back! Then you just go.

Actually you need brushes. You would just be able to order brushes change them out. Put them in anything today is throwaway a little drop of oil up there, we'll do wonders and the same on this side. Actually, the whole thing is all this needs to spin too.

Let's go hit it with a little bit of a truck's, cleaner, i'll, put oil on it when we need it where we need it after we assemble it all right now, we just have to worry about getting that into there. Let's uh get this back in the vice again, so we have some support to try and do that. I think if we figure out some way to grab it by the wire that sticks out the top i get in there if we were able to grab that and pull back on each one of them from that wire. That's up top, i don't know.

Maybe i can we can get a tie wrap around that. Actually i don't know if you just get like a piece of tape. We just tape them to the sides, pull them back and take them off after we get the motor in it. Let's go find out.

I actually ended up getting mechanics wire around them to hold them back. It seems like it's going to do the trick, i'm going to give a little bit of a little bit of grease for the bushing bearing bushing all right, we're going in can't see. Let's give it a little bit of push that direction, and can i get in there with a pick lost it? Try that again it's pretty not much room. I think you got that one i get them all there.

You go nice a little. Should we cut them off now? Let's go. Take a look at the other pieces that we have make sure that there's not gon na be any interruptions trying to get them on there. We're gon na have to well there's any cleaning to do on that.

I marked them with a sharpie. Hopefully it stayed. I'm gon na mark right there for just how it was indexed top and bottom figure's got ta line up to those bolt holes. Those channels have to line up to those bolts.

Some better lighting, probably wouldn't hurt, actually has a little key in it right there. So you can't really screw it up that notch has a notch right there than the housing for it to slide into liner up, i'm afraid, i'm going to put it on there. The magnets are going to want to suck up into the air, so i was afraid of see if we can get it. So that's not want to rack so much so tippy, i'm gon na hold down on the top of it to keep it from lifting up.

Where's our notch notch notch waiting the magnets get in there you're in nice. Let's go give a little bit of a little bit of that and we want to get this on there and how was that oriented again? I thought here's the sharpie mark problem is the case is so dark probably should use something a little different than the color that it's made out of right. Let's go see, actually it's got to line up with the screw hole, so i'll spin that around till it lines up with the bolts which i think are gon na be like that right through, i think that's it get those two through and then we can build On the the drive part of it nope i marked it. I am 180 out.

It was like that. That's like i say where i marked it good clean the bolts up on the wire wheel, so that they're not as cruddy going back in both those started. Don't want to lose it now. You know wonder if they make some like clips or something that hold those brushes back and then you remove it.

I know some of them i've seen like older ones, they have like a hole through the brush holder and you put a pin in it and the pin holds it as you're assembling it. I say we go for broke. I say we put all the stuff back together on top and have confidence, that's gon na work. Well, we have confidence that it's gon na not work and we're not gon na go back in again lube, my shaft, so we got this is first.

You want to clean that up, i'm going to go clean. Some of this up and hit that on the wire wheel get some of the crap off the plastic yeah, it's a little better, throw that on i'm going to throw the gear on and the bevel beveled teeth face in that direction, because when the starter after it Starts so it kicks out star spins it it kicks the gear forward as it's spinning it turns the flywheel. Then, once the engine starts in the flywheel, it runs faster than the starter and it knocks it back down again. Sometimes it's a spring sitting up on these.

A light light spring, this one doesn't seem to have it. I just got ta get our pin back in i'll. Do the same i'll, lay it on the vise on the side and i'll work on i'll lay it back down on the vice and i'll drive that back in again with a little bit of support, so i'm not beating beating a jesus out of it. You think see if we can hook power to that, make sure it does what it's supposed to do all right.

So now we're never. We just got to plug these two together, the switch is bypassed and just have some wires temporarily run around it. Make sure they're not hitting anything that they shouldn't be that see we get come on baby, so i got ta. I got ta whiff, a smoke on the plug side of things that does not smell good.

Let's go go. Try it again. A little draws a lot of current, though let's go see, stop blowing a fuse. It blew a fuse that spoke too soon.

I tried, i think it's got some little cross contamination happening with the windings that are in there either that or this guy whatever. This is right here is cooked and not doing what it's supposed to be doing. Let's um, it's already junk right. Let's see if that yeah, it's pretty hot.

Let's try bypassing that and we have the three wires going in. Let's just put the power right to the three wires going in without that thing and we'll see if it spins yeah, i don't know what that is. I don't know if it's a rectifier, i'm not quite sure what that is, i'm sure we could look up the part number probably. But what fun is that i'd rather electrocute myself and make entertainment instead, all right, we're gon na go, try plugging her together.

One more time and directly to the motor: let's see what it does. They answer your question. It smells like a train set. I had when i was a kid okay, one last time with that box connected without the ground mirrors.

Oh just ain't gon na play well and in a whiff of smoke my progress went bye-bye well guys. I was just having a little bit of fun, seeing if i could uh save what was there. I thought we kind of had it when i saw that brush was stuck on the uh on its innards right there, but i have a feeling something else is uh contaminated and grounded itself out to the armature, or vice versa, i'm just not quite sure, but at This point i'm gon na go call it i'm not going to go chase all that. It's not like.

It's a uh uh, a rare piece that uh it's going to cost me 500 to go, get a new one and it starts with the pull start on the snowblower. So with that, i am going to leave it and, if i happen to see one somewhere i'll grab it and throw it on, but that's it. What do you think that is? I wonder if that could even be what the failure is too, though, that whatever this is, is just not doing, let's see if i can bring up a part number on it. What is that big resistor what's got me? Is that the the motor switches over and says ac, if i set dc on, i say: okay, that's like a a bridge, rectifier changing ac to dc, but you know what it's calling out here: not that that maybe they take that into account with what's in there As it's all one piece, but again, that's just a guess.

I might have uh know what it's junk anyway, let's go. Take 12 volts hook 12 volts to it and see if it'll spin right all right all right, let's go for a hell, mary see what happens. I wouldn't think they would run three wires down now with it. You know another ground, but who knows ready, i'm not afraid of 12 volts like i am 120., that's exactly what it is.

So that's a rectifier that makes a dc out of ac. It's got no balls to it, though, or i'm totally wrong and you guys are gon na. Let me know in the comments, yes, i wonder if that's set up for like i don't i don't know what a rectifier would knock, that down. Output voltage do yeah, but that that would have enough enough balls to uh to spin it.

That's what i'm thinking, possibly if it. I wonder if it cranks that up to you guys want to look that up yeah. It's just again. I guess.

There's more numbers, don't know yeah, so i think it's a dc starter and they put ac to. It is just a guess on my part and again, who knows what that my guess is it's a rectifier it comes in and it flips the the wave over so that sine wave ac ac is like this and then i think it takes one of the waves And flips it over so it's probably 60 volts dc dirty, but 60 volts dc. It flips that wave over if that's below zero puts everything above the positive line, so zero 60 volts, 60 volts uh, so called negative and positive sine wave going for ac, and then the rectifier takes the wave flips that wave over and then gives you 60 on. One side and going one direction, so it's just positive and the the zero is negative.

That's i'm just guessing, i'm sure, there's people who are much more inclined to what this stuff does than i do, but i just hope you guys had a little bit of fun hanging out with me doing a little bit of ranching tearing it into a starter, see If you could save it, trying to educate ourselves a little bit and i'll educate myself, i'm sure from the comments and uh didn't even let you keep myself came close, but uh, maybe next time we'll try harder all right. It's actually about! Two weeks later, since i was screwing with the starter and kind of felt that that rectifier was no good and finally through the mail, i did grab another one for about 10 bucks. So hopefully that may fix our issue. I did a quick little wiring diagram.

I'm gon na go wire that up we're gon na go plug it in and see if that rectifies, our rectifier situation. So let's go get some wire swapped over and we got from the plug to the switch out of the switch is going to be black wire. Going to there we're going to have a new i'm wiring up the old one, all right, let's go with you, know orientation, correct, yeah, that one's gon na be white, see if we can get that to go back in, we get a cord to go plug in There and then we'll plug a cord into a cord. I think we're good.

We still have to push the little button to get it to go when we do so, it shouldn't do anything when i plug it in and hopefully no sparks, come out. Let's see what we get there, we go cool all right, so i think we have a possibly functioning starter. Let's go grab the snow blower put that back in there and see how she does under load all right. Let's give her i do have, or i will have i'm gon na pull the key back.

So there's no spark. I just want to see how it does. Cranking it over, i don't want to fire up right away. That sounds counterproductive, but see that should be just fine.

Let's try and start it. Some choke some throttle a lot of choke. What do you say? We go put in some snow all right, so so. Well guys, i think we got her, i think everything's all set again.

The only thing is the issue is the throttle was dropping down on me a little bit. I pulled a full throttle and slowly it would vibrate down. So i just got to tighten up a little bit of tension on whatever that linkage is down in there give it a little bit more drag, and i think we should be all set other than that everything seems to work. Fine, it does everything it should.

It's a tank. This thing is meant to last forever and again, whatever it's 40 years old, something like that and it's doing fairly well, i would say hi guys with that going to sign off and thank you all for hanging out with me. Have a little bit of wrenching learn a little bit some. I learned some stuff, and possibly maybe you did too so with that i'll see you soon, thanks for hanging out, take care bye, all right, take it back.

I did put a new plug on the end of the chord. I know you're gon na write the comments already done. You.