Experts Facilitate Tech OQ &A at ERA Show Part Ill Alan Melton of Northwest Regulator once again moderated the roundtable discussion at the annual Electrical Rebuilder’s Association Trade Show last month in Grand Rapids, Mich. He was joined by rebuilder Ken Plourde of Guy’s Auto Electric, and instructor Joe Davis of Joe Davis Enterprises, along with approximately 50 other rebuilders and suppliers. The following is a sum- mary of the morning’s discussion: Question from Tom Barrett/ Dakota Battery & Electric: “Would like to know how others are testing starters when you don’t have a starter test bench? Should we look at voltage, amps, rpm or ?” Reply: We do a lot of free spin testing in our parts store testers and we measure the volts and the amps. At that point, you still—the only thing you have left are your eyes and ears. And you can catch a lot of things with your eyes and ears but it does take a little bit of experience to do that. Another thing that I’ve heard a lot of people do is use a nice piece of wood or other to stick into the starter drive and give it some kind of a load but that’s probably not the safest way to do things because the sawdust flies around or… Reply: You don’t stick it in the pin- ion, you lean it up against the pinion. There’s a big difference. Reply: My dad had a pair of pliers that had no more teeth left in it. We just stuck the pair of pliers in there and grabbed ahold of the drive. Reply: I don’t have all the numbers but free run rpm is one way to test starters. And I learned this from one of the major remanufacturers years ago. We were doing some work for them. They were more interested in what the free run rpm of the starter was than any- thing else. And of course, at first, you know I said, aw, this is just a bunch of bull. Well, it wasn’t a bunch of bull. Like I said I don’t have the numbers …. Reply: What did you use to measure the rpm? Reply: You just use a tachometer. There’s two different kinds, there’s one that you can just put on the end of the shaft where the shaft is exposed. I’ve even got a tachometer where you can actually put a little piece of tape on a drive or something and measure it that away, you know. But there’s a lot to it. How one runs free run rpm to know whether the starter is good or bad. I just wish I knew or could offer more, or give you some numbers to work with. But I don’t have any numbers to work with. But you might actually if you had the time put your numbers together yourself by testing something. Reply: Commercial time again. For like $250 you can buy a stall starter tester and I can give you the basic numbers and it will just blow your socks off. Of any kind of starter if you want to find out what’s going on with it. If you look at the Delco specs that are available, probably on our Web site, specs are rpm more than anything else. Reply: The only thing I find problems with the free run in checking the rpm if you’ve got a tighter bushing or a looser bushing, your fits are always different and the rpm is going to change occasion- ally. Sure once you get it broke in, but how do you know when it’s broke in unless you’re really experienced at that? Reply: Eyes and ears. Question from Ron McHargue/ Ron’s Auto Electric: “How come the aftermarket companies cannot be relied on to build the regulator for 3G, 4G, 6G, PCM that will turn the light off? One will work OK, the next won’t. No trust in them.” Reply: The aftermarket manufactur- ers do build a regulator that will work for what they are designing it against. It’s like asking why won’t a Model T spark plug fit in my Corvette? It’ll work perfectly in the application that it was designed to work in originally. And when the aftermarket is designing the regulators they’re working off the latest version that they have. Unfortunately, the OEM manufacturers don’t really like us. So they don’t come rushing to our suppliers and giving them the latest tech specs as to what they’re putting into the new regulators that are coming down the road. So if you’re pur- chasing a regulator from a major manu- facturer you can be assured that they don’t want them to come back anymore than you do. And occasionally you will get a production run problem, but overall they’re just mimicking what they’re finding. And when they don’t have the latest regulator to work against, they’re building to what they have. Reply: Do you have any idea of what kind of lead time it takes from when they get their hands on the latest regulator to when it makes it into somebody’s distri- bution chain? Reply: It’s a good point, because most people don’t realize how long it takes. Because we in effect have to take these in and reverse engineer them. And Dan brought up a good point. We take a regulator at a point in time and generally you’ll find, especially with Ford and Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi in particular, they’re always making slight changes to their units as they go along. So we do a regulator at a point in time and that’s why many tim