Ben,
Your melted battery post experience motivated me to google the topic and I found the many results very interesting. Melted battery posts seem to happen on ATV’s, boats, motorcycles, trucks,cars, etc, and the most common advice I saw was that a loose, dirty or corroded terminal connection was the first thing to suspect. A lot of current running through a poor connection puts out a LOT of heat, and those lead posts have a fairly low melting point.
Your starter motor must have been misbehaving during the post meltdown, but it was OK when you tested it with the house batteries? How did it fail so that you had to have it repaired there at Velcro Beach? A solenoid stuck in the closed position would cause a huge amperage drain on the starting battery, and maybe be able to melt even a terminal with a good connection? I guess there’s several other parts of the starter motor that could malfunction and result in non-disengagement?
Anyway, I’m going to check Shaula’s starting battery connections soon! I should also probably buy a spare (2nd hand?) starter motor.
Thanks for telling the story of your adventures on Elizabeth! Your blog and your posts to the forum are outstanding, (entertaining and informative)–please keep it up!
Dan sv Shaula BCC 59
I did get the directly on the battery terminal style. I bought a 30 amp for the house bank and the 300 slow blow for the starter bank. That sounds sensible right? Old Nigel knows all. I refer to him the most out of all my books. Thinking of lightening the load, and ditching some of my other less-reached-for hardcovers…