As my wife says this is the Creole version. If you want the short version just go the the last line of the message.

1962 122S 4 door 2nd owner. too many miles.

The vehicle is mostly original. I have done some small upholstery restoration consisting of the front seat and the head rest in the back seat. When I aquired the vehicle in '85 it had 56000 miles on it and the original factory plastic covering the inside of each of the doors. The paint is goin and has started to show some signs of surface rust. The engine was rebuilt 4 years ago at about 250,000 miles. The mileage is guesswork since I have had the odometer out 2x for repair. After it failed for the 3rd time I said forget it! Change the oil every 2 months and call it a day. A while ago I had to put in a bypass and changed the ignition thanks to www.intelab.com/swem/.

So it ends up that after 40 years the starter is not getting a good juice up of available voltage. This I learned the hard way. I had 2 starters both of which were rebuilt about 5 years ago. One was installed and the other was kept as a spare. There are 2 styles of starts that fit the beast. I call them the short version and the long body. Others have called it the early or late style. The early style is the long body. The problem started out intermittenly as a clik and not the normal click of a failed solenoid.

One day after christmas but before new years, after a few clicks it would not start. I figured something was up and first suspected the battery. So while in the garage i hit the lights and tried to see if they dimmed. HUmm seemed ok. Hey about a voltage meter? Cool that worked great with no draw the battery showed over 12 volts. Next step get the wife to hold the start botton and check the voltage again. Well I had her ohold it too long and before I realised it I had smoked the starter! Yeah smoke came out of the starter. Cool FIRE!!!. Hey that is right neear the fuel line and not too far from the glass bowl fuel pump. Ok it was just smoke no flames - as far as I could tell. Oh yeah the voltage dropped to a tad over 8 volts - not good.

So I dumped in the new starter but befor connecting it I took it to the local rebuilder - he services some of the franchise car shops so in effect one layer is removed by dealing direct. I told him the tale and he said he may not be able to fix it if I "smoked" the field coils. In addition he gave mme a diagram of routing the juice directly from the battery therough a relay that would all but guarantee full battery juice. Gee sure wish I knew about that 4 hours ago.

Well it ends up that I managed to burn off the protective fiber tape around the firled coild and because I have the early version he was unable to come up with a nother set of field coils. As for the wiring of the coils they are fine but he did not know of anyone that could rewrap the coils. thus now that you have heard the Creole version here is the quest as I would like to keep the long body version installed...

Does anoyone know of a company, in the states, that re-wraps field coils?
Is it possible to obtain the material to do this DIY?
Is it a DIY project?

thanks

patrick
lostdiver61@yahoo.com