Thursday July 31, 2025 Startin' A Starter

Dirty hands can grip a pen when inspiration arises for I gotta write my blog post.

 

Finding the right starter, requires getting the right numbers for your year and model of vehicle. The best way is to take the old starter in, but in my case I hadn't removed it yet. I was told that a Remy starter was the best. As I was familiar with that brand from years ago it gave me added confidence.

 

    I just took out a starter on my 1993 Chevy Silverado K1500 in what I'm absolutely sure is record time -- six hours and some unrecorded minutes -- between rain showers, naps, and brain farts. It was an arduous event interspersed with lots of swearing and hysterical laughter/hysterical laughter and swearing/swearing/swearing and more swearing. I only regret that I didn't video it just as all the other home-shop/in the backyard DIY sorta mechanics do BECAUSE IF THEY HAD, I WOULD'VE NOT HAVE ATTEMPTED IT.  

 

THE BASTIDS!

 

    However, I am grateful that, at my age of 70+ something, I can crawl under my four-wheel drive pickup, parked in grass, and wrestle its gall-dang starter motor out from behind the exhaust manifold and frame members, and still laugh at the situation in between short bursts of rain, total frustration, and layers of 'unhealthy' Canadian wildfire smoke fresh from our nearest northern neighbor, Manitoba, just 28 miles away as the ravens fly.

 

    My shoulder, back, and hip joints pop as I pull myself out from beneath the truck gripping the aluminum running boards, again and again, for tools and the like; my disheveled goggles awry; my left side soft-rubber earplug that I employ still in place against falling rust chips and debris. Although they periodically fog up, goggles are highly prized doing this kind of work only inches from the totally-rusted undercarriage of my 32-year old pickup truck. My hair, nose, and cheeks attract what detritus the goggles don't cover and leave my face and neck rough to the touch.

 

    Tool lists called out in one instructional YouTube video, called out for metric tools which alone should've given me pause to ask, "Would General Motors used metric nuts and bolts on a 1993 Chevy product?" Nooo. I mean I've had metric tools for years, owning Toyotas, Hondas, and Kawasakis, but I was in a reluctant state of mind from the very beginning; indecisive between tackling the job myself or calling a tow truck and sending it to Kevin's Garage in Roseau to have them do it when they had time. But the wife said we had work to do with it sooner than later -- and after putting a considerable investment into it, most recently, of rear brakes and new alternator, I should do it myself if I could.

 

1959 GMC

    Well, it wasn't my first rodeo, as locals say. I had 'cut my teeth' doing mechanic work on my old 1959 GMC, back in 1983, after I rolled my 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser. Jerry Solom, of Solom Machine Shop, taught me/helped me pull the 'Jimmy's' engine out, and put a Chevy car engine in; as well as other modifications i.e., starters and transmissions, we managed to do between his welding & machining jobs, from his shop in Palmville. I gained a lot of confidence; learned a bunch of stuff, but sometime over the years I lost the initiative to tackle jobs like this -- and instead just paid others to do them. Jerry's untimely death 6-years ago, also quashed my DIY ambitions.

 

Hey, Jeff, I DID take a picture on the wiring hook-up of the solenoid; I'd forgotten. Looks like the smaller wire connection is the one to the upper left of the larger positive cable connection. I had called my old friend Jeff Barker in Des Moines, Iowa, for some advice on installing a new starter. He helped me tremendously, the auto and everything mechanic/fixer-upper he is. Laughter helps too. I asked him about maybe having to shim the thing; something totally out of my experience genre, and he helped me here too, but the video (in case anyone else is interested/confused about the procedure) explains all in a no-doubt manner. An excellent info source.

 

    Like I said, I finally got it out -- in record time. HA!  But I was happy all the same, hoping the installation of a new starter would be easier. In celebration of a job finally done --for now-- I opened a Cwikla (warm) beer or two, and sat on the truck's tailgate my dirty clothes smelling of ingrained oil and perspiration. 

 

    Daydreaming, I found myself thinking of a stretch of eastbound Interstate 80 over the Des Moines River for some reason. I can 'see' the traffic hurtling east there about sundown, west of the Lower Beaver Road bridge (probably no longer in existence) north a couple miles of where my late sister, Ginger, and her late husband Jim Wilson used to live on Brinkwood Drive, a million years ago. Spent a lot of time there.

    I remember leaving Exira, Iowa, for home, with the sun low behind my back after a delivery I had made with the Mid-America Dairy truck, within a convoy of semis on I-80 at 90 mph ... Hooyah, whatta rush! I was speedin', man.

    Another not so pleasant memory (You an fact-check it should you want) but I remembered learning about a young family in a car, heading east, pulling a small camper, lost control on the river bridge, fishtailed and went over the railing into the river. All were killed. I've thought of them all these 55 years ago now. How accurate my memory is I don't know. It's just stuck with me...

 

     Listening to a Mark Knopfler 2012 album "Privateering," and the song, "Redbud Tree." The song is about a man who is being hunted, whose discovery would be his death,  hides beneath the long boughs of a Redbud tree, and so makes me think of my late uncle Clifford Palm, from South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a WWII combat engineer who was lost behind enemy lines for two weeks; once hiding at night within a vineyard was so close to German soldiers, that "I could've tied their shoes." 

    Oh, and Knopfler's song, "Seattle," is a pretty tune to end with, on such a quiet Palmville evening.