I have a -3 and have problems starting. I have cleaned terminal ends, Bought new battery and bought a new gear reduction starter. Still wants to turn engine slow and it is even more difficult when engine is warm? My battery is in the tail of plane. Has any one moved the battery closer? If so Where and is there an STC for this? I'm ready to spin the prop faster on the Bugsmasher!
Battery location!
- Thread starter sfrancis
- Start date
cglucas
New member
You need the battery where it is for weight and balance. Have you tried the starter relay, they quite frequently go bad and you don,t get full voltage through them. My 14-19-2 has a piece of aluminum tubing running from the battery froward, some people replace that with copper wire and it helps...Greg
lwford
New member
Oh yes, I remember it well. The crate was an electrical mess when I bought it. It took me two months to get the power working properly. As Greg states the battery stays put for wt & bal. My attack plan started at the source. Replace the battery with a Concord sealed extra crank. Get rid of the pink lead acid junk. Next run new copper wire from the battery to ground from pos to main contactor and all the way forward to the firewall. You will find again as Greg says the transition at the firewall is where the big problem with voltage drop occurs. This I also replaced and it fixed the crate. It is now 7 yrs and still cranking fine. I took the starter motor and solenoid to my local trusted auto electric shop and had it overhauled. When it is off you can judge the condition of the starter adaptor. If it looks good it probably is. Aircraft Specialty Svs has a great STC for these but is pricey. I did a C182 with this. My guess with your ship is replace the battery ground with copper cable and the firewall transition stud. Take your time and do the simple stuff and cheapest fixes first. Smoke out is cheap, putting the smoke back in costs. I got that in Electronics 101. Lynn the crate flys on 
bellancaBrian
New member
My -2 always had the problem and the short cables at the battery and firewall were replaced by me,it Helped a little but the biggest help came from a battery maintainer. Of course it is only available when at my hanger but well worth the $. Brian
rw_flyer
New member
Had this problem on my -2, and over several years it got to where I usually couldn't get it to turn over when hot, so had to plan fuel stops to be over a looong lunch! Got fed up with that, so...
The fix was to be methodical about isolating resistance (voltage drop). Like Lynn, I found that most of the problem in my install was at the terminal end of the aluminum rod that Bellanca uses as a main battery conductor, at the firewall end. The steel bolt through the firewall + aluminum rod are going to corrode over 50 years. I ended up pulling out all the aluminum rod (takes about a day of upside down swearing and cutting it up into little bits, then finding the last little bit of friction tape holding it to the airframe) and replaced with copper wire (another day), and made a new copper through-bolt for the firewall. I also found that there was a bad crimp on the starter relay to starter jumper, it was heating right up once it started getting current through the firewall. New jumper fixed that.
If you can't find voltage drop in your + side of the circuit look for a bad ground off the engine or even a bad ground lead off the battery to the airframe. You can't do much about resistance through the airframe other than run a ground cable, which I wouldn't do unless you can't find any other resistance problems.
Being stupid, I had purchased a new Sky-Tec starter first, which of course didn't fix the problem until the lead resistance was addressed. You should start at the back and work forward. However with the copper cable + SkyTec the engine turns very fast, and light weight of the new starter vs. the PrestoPig more than offset the weight of the copper cable and moved my CG aft, both of which are nice side benefits.
The one dark side of fixing the starter is that once it turned over the engine reliably, I discovered a worn out starter adapter from 15+ years of "bump and grind". Pride of ownership!
The fix was to be methodical about isolating resistance (voltage drop). Like Lynn, I found that most of the problem in my install was at the terminal end of the aluminum rod that Bellanca uses as a main battery conductor, at the firewall end. The steel bolt through the firewall + aluminum rod are going to corrode over 50 years. I ended up pulling out all the aluminum rod (takes about a day of upside down swearing and cutting it up into little bits, then finding the last little bit of friction tape holding it to the airframe) and replaced with copper wire (another day), and made a new copper through-bolt for the firewall. I also found that there was a bad crimp on the starter relay to starter jumper, it was heating right up once it started getting current through the firewall. New jumper fixed that.
If you can't find voltage drop in your + side of the circuit look for a bad ground off the engine or even a bad ground lead off the battery to the airframe. You can't do much about resistance through the airframe other than run a ground cable, which I wouldn't do unless you can't find any other resistance problems.
Being stupid, I had purchased a new Sky-Tec starter first, which of course didn't fix the problem until the lead resistance was addressed. You should start at the back and work forward. However with the copper cable + SkyTec the engine turns very fast, and light weight of the new starter vs. the PrestoPig more than offset the weight of the copper cable and moved my CG aft, both of which are nice side benefits.
The one dark side of fixing the starter is that once it turned over the engine reliably, I discovered a worn out starter adapter from 15+ years of "bump and grind". Pride of ownership!