Starter Relays, I recommend them on all cars now Options

[McMark]

I've been meaning to post this for awhile and Andyrew's recent starter thread inspired me. I used to recommend against a relay at the starter because it was always known as a 'hot start' relay, and hot start issues can be a sign of a wearing starter. So I considered the relay to be a baind-aid to avoid have to really fix the problem - a bad starter.

Jamie (JRust) was having some ignition switch issues and I started to rethink my position on the starter relay. I realized that the crappy reproduction ignition switches that are available now are prone to failure from having too much current pushed through them. They simply aren't built with enough focus on quality to stand up to the way Porsche/VW designed the starting system.

So now I recommend a starter relay on all cars in order to avoid undue stress on either old, tired factory ignition switches or crappy reproduction switches. This can be any 30A or larger relay and Bosch sells a starer relay kit, but I didn't like some of the choices they made, especially because it's sold as a universal kit, which means it doesn't fit nicely on anything. So I put together my own kit designed specifically for our cars. I also found a relay that has a fuse built in, rather than a separate unit.

A starter relay can be made with pieces available from your FLAPS, but for those of you who don't feel like going that route, I've made a few of my setup available for sale. This thread is more about sharing information though, so I'll exclude the details here.