My 1996 Chevy just keeps blowing the solenoids on the starter. Its gone through three in one months time and I've run out of them. I was wondering if this is common or what I can do to fix this problem. I live in Butte, MT where the weather is a little colder than the average, is hard cranking during the winter the cause of this?

And is there a store that sell just the solenoids, I saw Carquest has them, but they cost more than a reman starter.

 

How long does it take to start?
Verify that all of your glowplugs are working.

I would suggest the Manual Glowplug Override Switch Mod. That way you can keep the glowplugs on a few moor seconds. Engine should fire right up after a second or two.

 

Use the gear reduction starter,if not already using it with the end bracket in place.

Many solenoids come from China and that is self explanatory.

Cold weather can thicken the lube on the starter drive and make it harder to engage.

What symptoms does "blown solenoid" mean?

 

I'm pretty sure all the glow plugs are working, I replaced all of them less than two weeks ago and made sure all the connections had juice running to them. After replacing the glow plugs, it usually starts on the first or second turn of the engine, maybe a second of cranking, if it cranks fast. I made a homemade glow plug override where the glow plugs still come on like they did from the factory, but ran juice to a switch to the glow plug relay allowing me to control the glow plugs as much as I want as long as the key is on "On".

When I say blown solenoid I mean that the pole on the solenoid that connects directly to the battery with the large cable isn't making any connections to the other poles, thus no power to the to the starter motor. I've been able to fix this with one of the solenoids by replacing the bolt and cleaning it out, but on the later ones that have blown, there was no way to fix them and no evident problem, just no connection to the other poles on the solenoid. The symptoms I guess are when I turn the key to start the vehicle, I hear a single ting noise and nothing else, starter doesn't even try to turn. When I take the starter off to test it, hooking my hot up to the wire running to the motor, it cranks perfectly fine. Cleaning all the connections don't help at all and hooking the hot any of the poles on the solenoid and touching a ground to any of the others doesn't produce any sparks or noise so there isn't any connection between the poles. What is a gear reduction starter, I've never heard of that, is it a whole different starter or a "setting" on the starter?

I never had this problem when I lived in New Mexico where the winters are warmer than Montana, so does using 5w40 synthetic oil in the winters make a world of difference when starting?

 

find a shop that rebuilds starters and get one form them. Lot of chinese made crap going around. The other issue "could" be if the starter motor itself it weak it could be pulling alot of amps through the contacts burning them up..

 

Not a weak motor, bought a new one that I put on a couple weeks ago and that solenoid already blew.

 

There are times when the crank wire does not provide enough amps to the starter solenoid pull in winding,not sure of it is power loss through the neutral safety switch or a bad ignition switch?

Some folks just wire a ford solenoid in the circuit to give the stock solenoid a hotter feed.

Connect the original starter S terminal wire to the ford solenoid S terminal,then take a hot feed from the starter battery terminal to one of the ford solenoid heavy lugs-then from the other heavy lug on the ford solenoid you go to the starter S terminal,12 gauge wire should get it the juice it needs.

 

I'm not trying to be a smart a** here but I have a question about running juice to a different solenoid and then to the starter. How is it a "hotter" feed, there's no way of producing more electricity than you send to a solenoid and you would send the same amount of power to that ford solenoid. If you're talking about replacing the entire system and running a wire directly from the battery to ensure 12v of energy and use the ford solenoid it would make sense, but when the hot wire running down to the starter is directly hooked up to the battery terminal, I just don't see how it would get anymore power. Can you try to clear it up for me, I just don't see how adding another solenoid would help with anything, to my knowledge solenoids don't have any capacitors or anything to store more energy to release, they are more or less just a switch/relay sort of deal.

Maybe your definition of hotter feed and mine were different, sorry I've only been on Dieselbomber less than a week.

 

I get your point about 12v being 12v,the idea of adding the ford solenoid is to get more amps to the solenoid to function.

the stock 16 or 18 gauge excite wire can't carry enough current to the solenoid to get a hard enough pull to engage the contacts.

When you use the ford solenoid,it requires very little amp flow to engage allowing you to run larger wires to the stock solenoid and get the required energy to activate it properly,something like crossing the large battery lug direct to the S terminal with a screwdriver.

 

I am by no means an artist but here is a diagram: