Trying to learn electrical . Baby steps

[Pgnorthatlantic]

Prepping to remove starter, I see the red pos cable attached to post on starter, obviously that brings juice to the starter
But I'm a little unsure about the other two wires also connected to starter. The smaller guage red and the small yellow wire, one prob leads to the ignition switch. Could anyone give me the facts?
Thank you.

[sdemore]

The big red wire should be the connection to the battery, supplying power to the starter. The other big one should be on the same terminal and feeds power to the ignition switch. The small one should connect to the starter switch and provides power to the solenoid to start the engine.

[Pgnorthatlantic]

Thank you very much Steve.

[alcodiesel]

Electrical is my area. But I'd sure like to know how to make circles and arrows on a picture like you did.

[sastanley]

Bill, there are lots of free programs to do that. A basic one is "paint" that comes with Windows. I use a similar free one called "paint.net", which has additional features and is a little more robust than the basic "paint".

One little warning...to keep it free, they have ads all over their site that point to other stuff..be sure to click the one that actually downloads paint.net and not something being pushed thru their ads..the big green buttons are usually ads!!

Below is a screenshot of their site with the download link circled.

https://www.getpaint.net/

[Pgnorthatlantic]

Mine cell phone came standard with that editor as many do now.
And my phone is a 150 dollar basic android phone, far from the top of the line.
Select one of your photos in your phone's gallery, select edit, then go through the edit menus and see what you have. Thanks again!

[joe_db]

FYI - the starter draws about 125 amps. That is carried to the starter *solenoid* - the small can on top of the bigger starter - by the thick cable. The solenoid is a switch activated by electricity instead of a human. The smaller wire supplies electricity to the starter from the button/key on the panel. It probably uses about 5-10 amps or so. The extra wire is essentially connected to the battery, so it could supply DC power to any number of things.

[joe_db]

General housekeeping note - those connections are all corroded and will fail at the worst time. I would clean them up and apply dielectric grease or Boeshield or something to keep them nice and also try and figure out why they are getting wet.

[sastanley]

General housekeeping note - those connections are all corroded and will fail at the worst time. I would clean them up and apply dielectric grease or Boeshield or something to keep them nice and also try and figure out why they are getting wet.

Good catch Joe...I had to climb under a buddy's quarterberth not too long ago with a winch handle and beat on his starter to get it to fire. (not an A4)..I hope he's cleaned his stuff up by now!