[jamaca85]

does anyone know where I can find a starter for a Pontiac without the solenoid mounted on it. do they even make one. I am looking to mount the solenoid on the firewall, i am looking for just the starter motor without the solenoid mounted on it. just like the old type fords. its for a 70 firebird 455. thanks see pic

[Schurkey]

Good luck with that. GM doesn't use the moveable-pole-shoe style starter.

Best you can hope for is a starter-mounted solenoid with the power and S terminal jumpered, and then use a remote solenoid somewhere between the battery and starter. If the rest of the vehicle gets power from another wire on the solenoid, you'll have to re-wire that, too.

If you have starter solenoid interference with headers, the usual solution is an indexable mini-starter rotated so the solenoid has adequate clearance.

[track73]

The GM solenoid does 2 things. First it completes the circuit from the positive cable to the motor, the second is it shifts the pinion into the ring gear. Ford used a positive engagement movable pole shoe drive with an overrunning clutch on older models which didn't have the solenoid mounted on the motor.

[steve25]

Even if you where able to run a Ford type starter a smaller race type gear reduction starter will be quite near the same price and yet work better when it comes to spinning the motor over!
Also it never hurts to wire in a Ingition kill switch even with a good starter to get the motor rolling over first before having spark take place!

[gtofreek]

We did this years ago on a Chevy starter, but I cannot remember why we had to do it. But we changed the armature out for an old GM type that used a centrifugal drive, and we wired the starter motor to a Ford relay. It is not something the average guy can do at home. Best to jumper the solenoid as mentioned above, or go mini starter route, which I am not the biggest fan of.

Also, the GM solenoid FIRST kicks the drive out into the ring gear, THEN it feeds power to the starter to make it spin, via the end of the plunger pushing on the contact points in the solenoid, once the drive is out.

[jamaca85]

too bad someone cant make an adapter for the ford unit to bolt on a Pontiac motor.

[Schurkey]

Originally Posted by jamaca85

too bad someone cant make an adapter for the ford unit to bolt on a Pontiac motor.

You're the first person in my thirty-five years of dicking with cars that ever wanted to cram a movable-pole-shoe starter onto a GM product.

Why? It's not like the Ford unit is a better design, or cheaper than a comparable GM OEM unit. Where's the benefit? What do you hope to accomplish? You have not yet described what problem you're trying to solve.

A heat-shielded OEM Pontiac starter in good condition and preferably with the longer "High torque" armature and field-coil windings will start the vehicle reliably for years on end. A quality mini-starter (most mini-starters are Chinese junk) will work just as well as the OEM unit, and draw less current from the battery doing it. Header clearance can be had with either starter--although the OEM unit is at a disadvantage here, mini-starters are designed to clear headers better than the OEM.

There's no need to reinvent or adapt anything. What you actually need is readily available, sitting on the shelf at fifty different parts supply houses. All you have to do is buy and install it.

[stellar]

Originally Posted by Schurkey

You're the first person in my thirty-five years of dicking with cars that ever wanted to cram a movable-pole-shoe starter onto a GM product.

Why? It's not like the Ford unit is a better design, or cheaper than a comparable GM OEM unit. Where's the benefit? What do you hope to accomplish? You have not yet described what problem you're trying to solve.

A heat-shielded OEM Pontiac starter in good condition and preferably with the longer "High torque" armature and field-coil windings will start the vehicle reliably for years on end. A quality mini-starter (most mini-starters are Chinese junk) will work just as well as the OEM unit, and draw less current from the battery doing it. Header clearance can be had with either starter--although the OEM unit is at a disadvantage here, mini-starters are designed to clear headers better than the OEM.

There's no need to reinvent or adapt anything. What you actually need is readily available, sitting on the shelf at fifty different parts supply houses. All you have to do is buy and install it.

Since it is a Sunday---AMEN