Floor Mounted Starter Button

[Dave Mann]

    The last time I looked the early switch on E bay was £250.00, so I had a look at the early Mini switch I had and had a go at making it into a replica Seven one. After a couple of hours I have a passable replica which looks the part till I can find an sensibly priced original.

[John P]

The last time I looked the early switch on E bay was £250.00, so I had a look at the early Mini switch I had and had a go at making it into a replica Seven one. After a couple of hours I have a passable replica which looks the part till I can find an sensibly priced original.

That looks excellent and is exactly what I was hoping to achieve.   

Would you be able to give a few more details of how you did it?   Unfortunately, although I was in engineering throughout my working life, I now don't have any access to machine tools so I need to come up with a design which looks OK but doesn't require much in the way of machining.   I was thinking of mounting the classic mini switch on a bracket fixed to the transmission tunnel and then fabricating some sort of shroud for the button.   Is this basically what you did?

John.

[Tony Betts]

If you don't like ebays prices, this is why you need to take the time to go to autojumbles.

Picked this one out of a dirty box at beaulieu at the weekend. From one of the European sellers. 
 
£10.00 bargain. Didn't even haggle.

Sorry it's not for sale, it was needed for a project being built at the moment.

Tony.

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[NickB]

Well done!

[Tony Betts]

Thanks nick,

I don't think I was the only one to strike it lucky.

The topic of starter button prices came up regular over the weekend. And I know at least one other person found one, I think also for a tenner?

Rather than spoil this thread with talks of beaulieu, I'll open another thread latter for people to hopefully tell us how they got on buying and selling. Or even the usual alcahol consumption over the weekend.

Tony.

[Dave Mann]

        Yes I agree Tony, here's a photo of an early vacuum wiper motor I picked up for a fiver at a car show last week. It needed cleaning, a stop pin spring and air connection. The starter switch had been kicking around for decades, I'm not sure what it was off but not a Seven, so it was a choice of selling it or making it into a look alike Seven one. 
So I used some 3mm plasticard I had to increase the button diameter which is secured with a 2BA countersunk brass screw, it should be 1/4 but I didn't have any 1/4 countersunk brass screws. The shroud is a piece of pipe turned to size and soldered to a base plate.

[John P]

Thanks for the info on how you made the replica starter button.

The early Mini ones I have seen are somewhat different and look like this so are not so easy to adapt:


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I suppose I will have to mount the switch on a bracket off the transmission tunnel and then make both a button and shroud to look something like an original.

Not quite as easy as I'd hoped but I don't have £250 to buy from e-bay and there aren't many autojumbles down here in Devon.

John.

[JonE]

that was probably my fault. I meant things like this...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Classic-Mini-...SwJTpa0ekF
out of interest, does it make a difference that they are marked as 12V?

[keith bashley]

Take a look at a Lucas ST18 (early Land Rover) £39 on EBay from classic motor spares which I was assured at Beaulieu will do the job on a Chummy bacon slicer?

[Bill Dixon]

John E, The 12volt means that requires 12volts to operate the internal solenoid. The solenoid operates the switch when the ignition key is turned ie on morris 1000,minis etc. A manual operation is by pressing the black knob on the unit, it could be used as astop gap until the correct unit can be found for £10. Good look on finding one.