Burning up fuel shut off solenoids.

Jesus Freak said:

Now that's a thought right there. My key switch has been janky for a bit and if I jump out of my truck in a hurry without checking, my stereo will still be on when I get back to it. It's only happened a couple times but it was on for 6-8hrs.......I bet that's our culprit! Good job @hacked89 !!!

I started to actually adjust the key switch earlier but I had to cook dinner, so I didn't want to marry a project.

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Exactly what you said would do it. If you leave ignition on without fuel flow for even 20 minutes and feel the top of the IP it will be warm. That’s your solenoid crying.

My 93 has 60 k on it and my key switch does that EVERY time

Naner Naner I don`t even need a key.

I did leave it turned on all night when I was working on something. The IP works ok, but the batteries sure didn`t.

Goat

Old Goat said:

Naner Naner I don`t even need a key.

I did leave it turned on all night when I was working on something. The IP works ok, but the batteries sure didn`t.

Goat

Click to expand...

A switch and a button would be fine with me. I'm not up to it today though.

A certain truck That I knew had several sol burn out. Truck was very nearly straight wmo all day every day.........

Black dawg said:

A certain truck That I knew had several sol burn out. Truck was very nearly straight wmo all day every day.........

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I've considered the idea that the oil doesn't cool it enough. And it's kinda my reason for a manual shut off idea.

I'm on to something!

I was gonna go out and give my chinanoid a test drive today. I needed hay and what better way to find out if your chinanoid is worth its salt but by pulling a trailer of hay.
So i had it crunk up and idling and warming up made the call, made sure my hay man knew I was heading his way, kissed the wife, told the kids "I'll be back", and hit the ROAD!!!......at least the drive way, before it just died and plop..... nothing. Halfway down my driveway! DANG!

Left the key on popped the hood, unplugged and plugged the chinanoid....... nothing......no click! NO CLICK!!! bad ground? No power? What?

I grabbed a screw driver and poked the ground strap, nothing...... and then I got bold, I didn't want to walk back to the house and all I wanted to see was a spark. I touched the top of the post where the power goes in to the solenoid to the cap of the IP with my screwdriver and nothing! There was no power at the wire! I unplugged and plugged back in the janky 40yr old engine wiring harness connector. I got a click! I unplugged it and replugged it a couple more times hearing the same click and then I was on my way.

Conclusion: the bad connection probably caused the original one to go bad since there would have been some compromised electric flow. I know it was bad, because I tested it off the vehicle and it did nothing. The second one was probably fine, but the original one frying probably helped compromise the connector in such a way that the second solenoid only appeared bad. I can't remember testing it.

Out comes: #1.I got an authentic chinanoid
#2. I'm committed to inventing a homemade manual shut off.

Well, the chinanoid made it 2 weeks. It died on me Monday. It was swollen up with goo coming out of it. I wasn't able to mess with it yet other than the roadside repair to get going. I'm not sure if it's getting too much voltage and frying them or what. I haven't checked it and really I'm absolutely committed to a mechanical shutoff now.

I really don't think it's WMO, I've done wmo for almost 4yrs now and this is a new phenomenon.

Anyway, updates coming. Next week, Lord willing.

Run a temp power jumper, them things just work... & like it was said earlier, the fuel cools it. Maybe even start it w/ cover off to verify fuel up there.

I am entertaining the notion that with solenoids, pull-in current is a *lot* higher than hold-in current.

What would happen if you put, say, some 1 ohm, 100 watt power resistors ( BTW, that's a standard off-the-shelf resistor ) in series with the FSS, and bypass this resistor with the NO contacts of a relay, whose coil is powered from the starter relay coil ( or contacts ).

The idea being when you first start the engine, during the initial start, the FSS coil is run at Full Power. As soon as you release the starter, the FSS drops down to hold in current which has to come in via the resistors.

Note that resistor is designed to be mounted to a heat sink. In this case, the firewall should suffice. If you have some thermal transfer compound around, a dab wouldn't hurt. Start with maybe two in series.

Get several resistors, as you may want to series and parallel them to get other holding currents. By experiment. They come in lots of five. That oughta be sufficient for a bit of trial-and-error to get a robust hold-in with minimal hold current, then wire it in for good when you get it right. My guess is to start off with two one-ohm resistors in series.

The resistors will dissipate some of the heat that would have been dissipated in the FSS.







Note this does the same thing a "ballast resistor" did for the ignition coil primaries on the old cars of the kettering-ignition points era.

I have been lurking on this thread for a while, but haven't posted until I felt I had anything useful to add. I consider this relentless string of FSS failure intolerable. I see is it correlates with WMO. Maybe WMO has some heat transfer anomaly from diesel fuel and the FSS also has borderline thermal design, and you just happened to luck out to discover it.

I also entertain the fear that some accountant got into engineering and directed the factory to wind aluminum wire on the solenoid. I have seen accountant types screw up more legacy design with cost-cutting ideas that result in enormous disappointment for the end user.

(Incidentally, I have several USB cables I discovered that were made with aluminum wire when I tried to solder them. Aluminum simply wouldn't "wet" right. I seen them use iron wire too. And watch out for those cheap jumper cables! That CCA rating is not Cold Cranking Amperes.... Rather when referring to what looks like copper wire, it likely means "Copper Clad Aluminum"! )

A discovered a washing machine motor wound with aluminum wire when I tried to salvage some copper wire from it. The enamel was copper colored. The wire was aluminum.

I agree w/ both. You are correct about the pull in vs the hold in solenoid operation. Keeping the pull in energized will burn it out.
And the cca wire is junk, don't believe anyone that says otherwise. Bunch of them liars on ebay...

If he has a spare good solenoid sitting on the bench, if he puts the metal plunger inside the coil and hooks it to 12v sitting on the bench, weeks later it will still be sitting there energized. Something is not letting the plunger (guts) of the solenoid enter completely into the windings of the coil. That is why it is burning up. There are thousands of these things on the road and in operation, and they rarely give any problem.

franklin2 said:

Something is not letting the plunger (guts) of the solenoid enter completely into the windings of the coil. That is why it is burning up.

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This is very true on AC solenoids. A fully inserted core closes the magnetic circuit and greatly decreases the reluctance ( which increases the inductive impedance, X(L)) of the coil, dropping it's current draw significantly.

However with DC, it won't work this way. Unless there is some sort of switch in there to include another portion of coil winding when the core fully inserts.
My strong suspicion is someone has changed the manufacturing process of these parts. It seems the big thing these days...some MBA/Accountant type lands a Corporate job, and in his excitement to demonstrate his worth by cutting costs, he makes changes that the rest of us have to live with.
I've been around these "Wall Street" types. They have different skill sets and motivators.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see them instruct the factory to wind the coils with aluminum wire or some low grade copper to save a buck .
I personally had so many problems with after-market glow plug relays that I ended up using the same industrial White-Rodgers contactor design that Wes is kitting for manual glow plug conversions.
We used to think newer meant better.
It's not just us. Imagine all the businessmen who paid big bucks for the latest technology where others come into your machine and change things.

Boeing hasn't been having much luck keeping their planes from falling apart mid-air either.

All I can do is come to the conclusion that modern business types and I just don't think alike. We have different goals. Once these guys get control of the boardroom, company's over.

BeastMaster said:

This is very true on AC solenoids. A fully inserted core closes the magnetic circuit and greatly decreases the reluctance ( which increases the inductive impedance, X(L)) of the coil, dropping it's current draw significantly.

However with DC, it won't work this way. Unless there is some sort of switch in there to include another portion of coil winding when the core fully inserts.
My strong suspicion is someone has changed the manufacturing process of these parts. It seems the big thing these days...some MBA/Accountant type lands a Corporate job, and in his excitement to demonstrate his worth by cutting costs, he makes changes that the rest of us have to live with.
I've been around these "Wall Street" types. They have different skill sets and motivators.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see them instruct the factory to wind the coils with aluminum wire or some low grade copper to save a buck .
I personally had so many problems with after-market glow plug relays that I ended up using the same industrial White-Rodgers contactor design that Wes is kitting for manual glow plug conversions.
We used to think newer meant better.
It's not just us. Imagine all the businessmen who paid big bucks for the latest technology where others come into your machine and change things.

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Boeing hasn't been having much luck keeping their planes from falling apart mid-air either.

All I can do is come to the conclusion that modern business types and I just don't think alike. We have different goals. Once these guys get control of the boardroom, company's over.

Click to expand...

I have had DC coils burn up just like A/C coils. Without the metal plunger all the way up inside, they overheat, the windings melt together, and this creates a short circuit to ground which blows the fuse.