Solenoid

[andyofcolumbusmerkur]

Is 1989 Merkur xr4ti solenoid polarity sensitive? And is it ok to wire a mini sparter to the always hot side of the late style oem solenoid?

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Is 1989 Merkur xr4ti solenoid polarity sensitive? And is it ok to wire a mini sparter to the always hot side of the late style oem solenoid?

I never thought about it, as I always hooked them up the same way. But it would seem the large terminals are not polarity sensitive but the small connections are.

The mini starter is indeed connected to the "Always hot" side. The small trigger wire gets switched.

[my8950]

https://www.merkurxr4ti.com/ref/mini-starter.pdf

[andyofcolumbusmerkur]

It does say to connect to always hot side in the instructions. That's also the way I saw someone else's mini starter installed. Only thing is then I will have a heavy gauge wire that is always hot going down to the starter, instead of that same wire only being hot when the solenoid in activated. Maybe people install it this way since the solenoid is now used to send an activation signal to the mini starter, and they don't want to it to also carry the larger load for the starter at the same time. If I simply ran that smaller signal wire to it's own relay then I could run the heavy gauge wire in it's original safer factory location. Not sure if anyone else has done that.