Vintage Ford Mustang Starter Rebuild - How To: Rebuild Your '65-'73 Starter

There was a lot of slop in the bushing out back, so we used a small chisel to remove the rear bushing. Be careful not to score the case. Work patiently and you should be rewarded with mangled bits of bronze bushings.

Check your new bushing on the shaft of the armature to be sure that there is no appreciable play. After the old bushing is removed, use a socket of equivalent size to tap the new bushing into place.

We had to use a Borg-Warner brush set rather than the NAPA set since the F504 set was a warehouse item for the stores. We took a quick trip to Pep Boys and purchased the Borg stuff. The one thing we found problematic was that one of the new brushes had no threads. We quickly snipped the contact from our original set and used it as a nut on the new set.

We used a socket to push out the bushing in the drive end. Be careful not to damage the case since it's aluminum. The new brushes were put back from inside the case. We made sure that the new bushing was set in the same position as the original.

The gasket for the cover was at best a crumbling mess. We had some gasket-making material on hand, so we made our own by setting the cover on a curved surface (our bench vise) and drawing the outline of the cover. We then cut this out-inside and out-using a utility knife.

We used some axle grease to make sure that the starter plunger lever would give long service. After we pushed the pin through a final time, the extra grease was removed.

The field coil brushes will need to be soldered to the field coil. You will need a soldering iron that can heat the clip and the copper.

We checked continuity on the brushes after we soldered them to make sure we didn't mess up anything with the soldering process.

Though it's a little hard to see here, the brushes are in their holders at an angle. This way, we can stick the armature back into the brush-end plate with little or no frustration.

We greased the armature shaft at both ends and carefully set it into the housing. We then put the drive onto the shaft.

Next, we put the stop ring (C-clip), the retainer, and the washer on the shaft. We applied a thin film of grease to these items for better wear protection.

We used high-quality 3/4-inch electrical tape for a vapor barrier to replace the original material that looked similar to masking tape. The excess was trimmed off, and we applied the band clamp.

In position and ready to go. The starter was painted gloss black and allowed to dry. We used some of AMK's excellent cad-plated starter bolts to complete the new look.