Alton starter motor

cliffa said:

Are the coils mounted on plastic cotton reels?

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No, there is a thin glassfibre laminate glued to the core iron. On the stator there are three of them each side, each one has four tee shaped protrusions that match up with the core iron inner projections. Its these tee shapes that allow the coil to be wound without falling off the core iron and most importantly stop the core iron cutting through the wire insulation. When you unwind the coils to get to the broken wires these tee shaped ears fall off. I had to cutout new ones and epoxy them to the core iron, that allowed me to rewind the coil and keep it in place.

Hi Cliff,
I think that your lack of charging might be caused by the rotor magnets losing some of their magnetism.
I get over 14 volts from my Alton at 2000 rpm with the Alton stator.
By the way, what I did find out is that the two Alton alternator connectors inside the primary and also the two connectors where the wiring harness connects to those same wires outside the primary had voltage drops across them. I soldered all of them and it increased the charging voltage.
Dennis

cliffa said:

That’s pretty good then if you take into account the performance improvement and the comparison to an oem replacement.

I would really like to get the alternator rewound on mine, as the charging is very marginal below about 3k rpm.

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The charging on mine has always been marginal at low revs
I always thought it was the power hungry Lucas Rita that wasn't helping so I changed to a rex speed shop modern replacement CDI but it made no difference
I tried running my ignition from a separate battery and the charging was perfect even at idle

phippsy said:

Just remembered the £60 of it, but new starters from Andover Norton are retailing at £468 excluding VAT & postage so a rebuild is less then a third of a new starter .

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Many thanks to Erik for sending me the dud Alton starter, I have compared it to the bits of starter i had bought at auction. Both rotors display the crude shaft shortening (the end of the pinion looks like it was cut off with a grinding disc) that i presume Alton have done when they modified the base starter they have used. This prompted me to look online for the base starter that i think is from a honda. There are thousands of these things available and getting accurate information from vendors can be a bit of a lottery. When the two motors i have ordered arrive (£50 and £20 each, brand new! makes the £400 plus that AN and Alton charge seem like robbery) i will know a lot more if i'm on the right track.
The motor Erik sent me can be repaired and upgraded at the same time. The drive end bush has worn oval (because of the side thrust of the drive pinion). Boring out and fitting a roller bearing will stop that happening again and will release more starter power to start the engine (This is the big improvement to the Mk3 prestolite starter, change the bush bearings for roller bearings, transforms the starters performance)

The Honda starter, is it the one with the planetary gears to slow the shaft down, originally made by Mitsumi. It puts out a lot of power in the later 4 pole versions. I used a KLF300 version on my Norton starter and the first seller I went to had standardised on 4 pole when the OEM was 2 pole.

kommando said:

The Honda starter, is it the one with the planetary gears to slow the shaft down, originally made by Mitsumi. It puts out a lot of power in the later 4 pole versions. I used a KLF300 version on my Norton starter and the first seller I went to had standardised on 4 pole when the OEM was 2 pole.

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Which norton are you talking about? Mk3 or earlier? The Alton starter is a permanent magnet direct drive motor

Custom job, self engineered.

kommando said:

Custom job, self engineered.

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No generator then? and how did you get the drive down to the jackshaft? chain or gears?

Norton timing chain which is tensioned by moving the starter in its mount, inside the primary is a auto tensioner on a plate put on last, the internal chain is a Honda one as per the sprag unit out of a Honda Gold Wing. The room for it all comes from the Andy Chainmans duplex primary chain, crank is extended and a thin 3 phase 10.5A Lucas alternator with thin Tiger Cub rotor fitted.