Dead Batteries

[Wayne Hingley]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

…I had to replace the two inner side insulator plates as they were charred so badly...

David; do you remember where you got the replacement insulator plates, or what that material is called? One of mine had deteriorated on one end. I did a temporary repair to it, but would like to replace them with new ones.

So far no problems with battery drain... Rob nailed it!

[David Dunlop]

Hi Wayne.

When I cleaned the originals to see what they were, they were basically brown, phenolic circuit board material. I went to the local Radio Shack store at the time and bought a solid, copper plated circuit board kit that included a pen and a bottle of etching solution. I tossed the pen and applied the solution to the entire board (it was only 6 inches square) to strip all the copper off.

I then traced the pattern for the two plates onto the board and cut them out with a hack saw as I recall.

The copper etching solutions are readily available on the web, but I am not sure who in Canada still sells the solid, copper plated PCB’s.

Hope this helps, Wayne.

David

[Wayne Hingley]

Hi David. Yes that helps. Circuit board is also what I thought of, but wasn’t sure if/where it could be purchased.

I opened up a spare starter tonight, and the insulators in the second one are a slightly different material. These ones are shaped to wrap around behind the contacts. Seems like a better design. This spare starter was rebuilt at workshop 202 in 1979.

[chris vickery]

Wayne, how thick is the material? I have a source for excellent insulation material...
We often use G10 to replace old phenolic board and the like.
also probably have some micarta and other fibre based insulation kicking about.

[Wayne Hingley]

Hi Chris. The circuit board style pieces were about 1/16" thick, but the style shown in post #7 is close to 1/8" thick. Maybe in metric dimension it would be considered 1mm.

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by Wayne Hingley

David; do you remember where you got the replacement insulator plates, or what that material is called? One of mine had deteriorated on one end. I did a temporary repair to it, but would like to replace them with new ones.

So far no problems with battery drain... Rob nailed it!

The insulating material looks like Tufnol (synthetic resin bonded fabric).

(The old "circuit board" is similar but uses paper instead of cloth as the matrix, but it's the same "Phenolic Resin" binder for the brown variety.)

http://ahistoryoftufnol.org/whatistufnol/

Birmingham: city of a thousand trades - some of which are still operating.

Chris.

[Wayne Hingley]

Interesting. Thanks Chris. It seems there are several types of products out there that will perform the role needed. Hopefully one of these options will be available in small quantity, as I only need a few square inches, plus a spare bit for future use. I’ll do a bit of research on availability of these products to see what is available. Of course Chris V may come up with something as used in their industrial applications. Thanks to all for the input of information.