Starter Replacement

5 minute read

Starter Replacement

Compliments of turf63 @ https://landroverforums.com

8-16-2010

As always, before you do anything disconnect the negative battery terminal as the starter is in a really cramped spot with the positive and negative really close together. If you get a ratchet anywhere near the solenoid with both terminals still on, you're gonna get a shock (TRUST ME).

The starter is located on the passenger side of the motor underneath the exhaust manifold and a heat shield that protects the Starter and starter solenoid

(here you can see the exhaust manifold below the plug wires, the heat shield for the starter just below that (bent away from its clip) and the frame rail below that)
The heat shield pulls right away from the solenoid, its only fixed with a spring clip so it comes on and off easily.

From the underside it looks like this.

here you see the hole for the starter as I had already taken it out, the positive wire for the starter positive post and the ignition relay wire are in the left foreground, relay
wire is smaller, positive from the battery is obviously the larger. The ground cable is in the right background near the hole for the starter gear. It’s the braided cable.

They attach to the starter here

The main positive wire attaches to the post on the far left ( I believe it’s a 13mm socket), ignition relay attaches to the clip above it, you can see the solder point better than the clip itself and the ground cable attaches to the upper hex bolt that holds the starter in place.

The starter slides out and in the same way (in this picture im actually putting it in backwards, you want the bell housing to go in first so that the terminals are facing the front of the truck), through the gap underneath between the junk here, I don’t remember exactly what is what (feel free to edit for clarity)

Once the starter is in, you can finger tighten the hex head bolts to hold it in place. Here is the starter with the bottom hex bolt, finger tight and the ground cable off. Also you can see the battery cable is looped over the starter post ready to be tightened down. You also want to hook up the ignition relay for the solenoid before doing the battery positive as the relay is a clip that will be tough to get at after the positive line has been torqued down.

Here's a closer look

I chose to tighten the hex bolts before I went after the battery cable connection, for the bottom bolt you can run an extension about 24” to get ahead of the front axel which gives you much more space to torque the bolt and just work your wrench in general. This is the view from the top of engine compartment of me torquing the top hex boltwith the ground cable in place.

to give you an idea, this is how much extension I used.

Going after the bottom hex bolt is the same as going after the starter positive post, except instead of a hex , the positive post is a 13mm socket. You want to use the adjustable angle adapter (from the previous pics) for the socket and run about 24” of extension to get you out in front of the pumpkin with your ratchet. So once you’ve got your two hex bolts (the top one including the ground cable) and your starter cable all bolted up and the solenoid relay clipped on, you’re ready to go. Don’t forget to push your heat shield clip back onto the solenoid as well.

Congrats, you just replaced your starter.

Also, i would NOT recommend the refurb unit i bought through Advanced, i put one in in december and then ended up replacing it again in may or june. So who knows how long i'll get out of this one, although they have limited lifetime too.