Originally Posted by
hoopdog
OK, well in honesty, I had already hooked up the cap both ways, 85 to 86 and vise versa, no difference and no delay at all. as soon as the plunger switch made contact it would spin up,,no delay with the cap in place facing either direction. The motor would stay engauged for a second or so after I let off,,which I found odd. but I beleive it is the relay I am using.
The relay I am using is a Painless Wiring vehicle starter relay, which is a 20x20amp relay. It's designed to basically remove the vehicle starter soilenoid from the equasion in the event you have a slow cranking starter motor on your 1:1 vehicle. So I believe it might be just a bit to heavy duty for a rc starter box app and probably has a sneak circut to allow the relay to stay engauged and continue to spin after I let off.
I have another 40 amp relay and are going to give that a try this weekend. also try clipping the cap and see if that fixes the continuous cranking.
There can be a few things going on there. If you don't have your relay wired correctly, that will bypass the capacitor and eliminate the delay. Capacitor size has a lot to do with it also.
Let me explain capacitors a little
A capacitor discharges 7 times faster than it charges. When it reaches max capacity, current will skip right through it because current ALWAYS takes the path of least resistance.
So what that means is the first time you use your starter box, there will be a delay to charge the capacitor. When you release the starter box and the connection breaks, there's nothing there to continue drawing from the capacitor so it's left at a fully charged state. Capacitors can and will store voltage for years.
Now the next time you go to use your box, the cap is at peak voltage already so there's no charge time or delay and you think it doesn't work anymore.
Now in your case, when you let off the starter box, it keeps running for a little bit. That tells me that it's running off of the voltage stored in the capacitor and indicating that you don't have it wired up correctly.