Date: January 28th 2000
Title: Starter Woes
Story:
At the time I acquired my first binder, a 1950 L-110 pick-up I was living in HUD housing (read projects) in Bakersfield Ca. My car at the time, a 77' Olds Cutlass had just thrown a rod, and I was without any wheels. Down the street from my grandmother in Castaic Ca there was this old truck for sale,
$300 and it was mine. The only problem with it was the starter was bad. This meant push starting it where ever we went. It is amazing how fast you get to where you can gauge even the slightest hill and park facing down it.
OK now this was the first time I had even heard of a 6V pos ground, and knew nothing about IH at all. The search for a starter began........
Nothing available, "Hell they don't even make 6V starters any more, good luck son"......... now off to the rebuild shops.
It seems the armature is wrapped with square wire, that's right square wire. "They don't make square wire no more, good luck son". I was too poor to have the machine work done to convert it to round wire. the searching and the pushing go on.
By this time, my friend is gonna have Delco-Remy tattooed on his forehead because of his second life as a starter. Now it comes to my attention that you can change it to 12V neg. ground. Things are starting to look up! Nope nothing listed for an IH.......here we go again. Now I find a very old IH guy, tells me that ford starters from the bigger gas trucks will work. find one at the neighborhood auto parts, something like $20 and guess what........it works!
I still own that L-110 some 20 years later and I am rebuilding it from the ground up, I won't tell ya how long I've been at that little project though.........it's embarrassing!
Contributer: Brian Ross
