|:: Project - Fix Mazda MPV - Part 2 ::|

tired and hungry, jon and i went back into the house for some food and more brainstorming. i jumped only to search more about what other people had to say about removing starters from mpv vans. there was this one post that talked about having to remove the power steering gearbox and the alternator to slide the starter off.

after some food and new motivation, we were back outside trying to get the darn thing off again. we followed the instructions carefully and with some luck got the power steering wheel off, then realized that we didn't have to take anything else off because there was a big enough gap for the starter to squeeze out. lo-and-behold, after some wiggling it just dropped into our greasy little hands like butter.

success!! now it was time to test the starter.

goal : test the starter

now our new goal was to test the starter. we wired the battery to the starter solenoid and proceed to test it. funny thing was, none of us really knew what or how the starter should react normally if there was no problems. so we just hooked it up and tried to see what it did. we played around with it for an hour or so plugging the battery cables into different prongs and saw what it did. after some investigation, we notices that one of the prongs from the solenoid wasn't sending power through the system. and after multiple test, it seemed that that was the cause of the problem, or at least that's what we thought.

so now we could have done one of two things, (1) take apart the solenoid and try to fix it, or (2) find someone who was selling one and buy it. being the cheapo that i am, i choose the first option to see how hard it was going to be to fix it. did some research online to see if anyone else has done it, and found a page that had some instruction on how to take the thing apart for cleaning. okay, so let's try it.... hmm needs to have a welder to burn off the chrome plates... okay that sounds not so bad. only until i tried to do it that it kicked it... yup, there is a specific reason why mechanics get paid a lot to do this, this is totally out of my league.

went onto craigslist to find a seller of the starter, and found one chinese guy who was selling it for 60 bucks. i called the guy and tried to haggle with him to get it for cheaper since i was willing to trade my broken starter thinking that he might be one of those guys who fixes these dang things. best i could get was 50 for the new working one. left with not much other choice, i had jon go buy the starter two days later.

friday came around and finally i had the new starter from jon, and was really anxious to put it in to see what how it works. this time no one was there to help me so i had to one man show it, luckily i remembered all the steps for taking the starter off... but not so luckily, i forgot where some of the bolts and screws go back on the car ?_?... that didn't stop me though.

got underneath and plugged all the wiring back into the new starter. before putting the whole thing back together, i went to test the starter by trying to start the car. immediately, i notice that the new work starter responded without trouble. i heard the loud clicking noise of the starter working, and knew that that was the root cause of our problem. so i went back and put everything back the way it was before we removed the starter, and after 1.5 hours later, everything was back to it's right place.

getting anxious, i jumped into the car after plugging the battery back in and gave it a whirl. presto!!! the engine starter and the car was functional again.

the project was a success!