[bfunke]

Looking at the high torque starter sold by our host it appears very similar to the one in my Toyota Tundra. The Toyota starter is made by Denso and has a great motor but the solenoid section is failure prone. If you remove the yellow zinc pentagonal cover you will see a spring-loaded round copper plunger. Under this are a pair of L shaped copper contacts. When energized the plunger is pulled making bridging the contacts allowing current to pass. This is what fails. The current passing accross these parts is great enough to eventually arc/melt the edges of contacts and plunger causing them to no longer conduct. In Toyota circles, this results in the infamous "click of death" and no start when the key is turned. I had this failure at about 90K on my Tundra. Naiively I asked the local dealer for a quote and he told me $1300 to replace the starter!!! The contacts from Toyota list for something like $25 each in the US. Fortunately they are fairly generic Denso design and I was able to get a new plunger and contacts for less than $10 from a local electric shop. I can't say enough good things about my friends on these forums because they walked me through the starter removal process. Despite some of the infamous German design glitches in our cars, we should be thankful the starter placement wasn't done by Toyota - they put their starter in the engine valley necessitating removal of the COP ignition, fuel injection system, plenums and intake manifolds to get to the starter!