Bothering to rebuild Valeo starter?

[yackee]

After having replaced battery, starter switch, and relay, and still putting up with increasingly intermittent starting issues I decided to replace the "made in France" Valeo starter on my 1976 T3. (PO must have replaced the Bosch at some point). I have a new "made in Poland" starter on the way from MG. New, they cost about $200 bucks.

What if anything should I do with the old one? I suspect it needs to be disassembled and cleaned. I have no time to do this, but was wondering if it was worth taking to a local starter-rebuilder. Or should I just chuck it in the trash? When my boat starter died, the shop just chucked it, but maybe the economics of rebuilding the Valeo are different?

[Chuck in Indiana]

Just saying, but it just may not be the starter.. there are many low voltage to the starter fixes posted here.

[Chuck in Indiana]

He did. 76 T3..

[Kiwi_Roy]

Just saying, but it just may not be the starter.. there are many low voltage to the starter fixes posted here.

:1:
It would help if we knew what bike you are referring to

How did I miss that, I must be loosing the plot

Yackee
           Can you elaborate on the failure to start
Case (A) Does the starter engage with a clunk but doesn't turn
Case (B) Or do you just get a soft click from the start relay

Verify the starter is up to the task by running a wire from the starter solenoid spade connector and touching it to the battery positive terminal (Caution - make sure the bike is in neutral}
You can leave the key off while you try that several times.
If it seems to crank strongly the starter and battery are probably ok.

Case (A) verify you are getting at least 11 Volts right on the starter terminals, Many times the fault can be a bad battery ground connection, it's best connected to a gearbox bolt smeared with Vaseline
Update:
As others have since pointed out sometimes the magnets break free on the Veleos and jamb things up they are just glued in place
I know owners have successfully glued the magnets back in place.

Case (B) Often failure to start is caused by Voltage drop in the signal to the starter solenoid through a dirty ignition switch or bad connection along the way. The Valeo starter solenoid pulls over 40 Amps while it engages the gear so it needs a really good connection. This high current only lasts for about 20 milliseconds once it is in place the solenoid contacts start the motor spinning at ~150 Amps and the solenoid drops right back to < 10 but the key is it has to get the gear engaged first
The usual fix for this condition is to supply a direct feed from the battery to the Start relay bypassing the ignition switch.
Both the Bosch and the Valeo suffer from this same problem, their solenoids both draw about 40 amps, it's likely the PO thought tossing out the Bosch for a Valeo would fix it, personally I prefer the old school Bosch

[Tom]

Any bench testing to see if the old starter works?  The Valeo starter is easy to rebuild or refurbish either that or offer to let someone else recycle it.

[Two Checks]

Could be as simple as the magnets coming loose.

[Wayne Orwig]

You can get parts, if YOU want to rebuild it, or repair it.
I wouldn't bother taking it to a shop. You can now get after market units that are good enough, for what you will need to pay for a rebuild.

[Tom]

 :1:  John is easy to work with.  Must be a small shop but has a nice website for ordering parts.   

http://www.euromotoelectrics.com/category-s/1606.htm

[Kiwi_Roy]

We need Yackee to feed us some more information before determining that the magnets have broken loose.

[Tom]

Bench test would help but he doesn't seem interested.   Modifying my post after the fact.     "Nevah mind". 

[yackee]

I guess I should have bench tested it but I have been pressed or time over the past month or so, and the new ones seemed pretty cheap and I had assumed that the old starter was original to the bike (which I now know is obviously not the case, though I do suspect it is at least 15 years old).

The symptom: sometimes I press the start button and it fires right up. Other times I press it and all I get is a click at the relay (which has been replaced/swapped out and is definitely not the issue). Some times, if I hold the start button down, I get the relay click, but the starter doesn't turn over, until after having held the starter button a few times). A variation on that is that I push the button, nothing but relay, push it again, nothing but relay, push it again, starter motor turns, often a bit slowly at first.

Voltage to the starter motor solenoid (red wire) is acceptable when the starter button is pressed.

[Kiwi_Roy]

I guess I should have bench tested it but I have been pressed or time over the past month or so, and the new ones seemed pretty cheap and I had assumed that the old starter was original to the bike (which I now know is obviously not the case, though I do suspect it is at least 15 years old).

The symptom: sometimes I press the start button and it fires right up. Other times I press it and all I get is a click at the relay (which has been replaced/swapped out and is definitely not the issue). Some times, if I hold the start button down, I get the relay click, but the starter doesn't turn over, until after having held the starter button a few times). A variation on that is that I push the button, nothing but relay, push it again, nothing but relay, push it again, starter motor turns, often a bit slowly at first.

Voltage to the starter motor solenoid (red wire) is acceptable when the starter button is pressed.

They are typical "Startus Interuptus" symtoms, too much resistance in the solenoid circuit causing it to fail to pull in

Do the "Hot wire solenoid test" I outlined in my earlier post.
Crimp a spade connector onto 3 ft of 18 gauge wire
Slide the connector onto the solenoid terminal.
With the bike in neutral, key off touch the other end to battery positive for a fraction of a second, do this about 20 times
If the starter cranks every time you can say "Ok there's nothing wrong with the starter or battery"

If the starter fails to crank then you can figure out if its the battery or the starter
I'll wait to see what happens to the Hot Wire test before I go into that.

If you put yet another new starter on and it doesn't work, what then?