12 Volt Starter

[MikeK]

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It depends on how hard you want the starter to slam the drive. A 6V starter on 12V will deliver four times the torque, not just twice as much. Power =amperage squared times resistance. The amperage will double for a 6V starter on 12V. When you square that, you get 4X engagement slam force.

With the starter fields rewired from parallel to series, (making it a 12V starter) and then feeding that in series through the same armature, the average converted starter will still show almost 2X the power, but not so much as to severely abuse the drive.

As far as 'barrel' drives go, they are not without their own problems. The can and do fail and are extremely difficult to change on-the-road unless you carry a special tool to compress and expose the shrouded set screw. When a barrel drive fails and locks in the extended position because the much finer helix shatters from poor off-shore manufacturing heat treating, the rear often cannot be compressed to access the set screw. It becomes hack saw and abrasive cutoff wheel time.

People seem to forget an engine in good health and tune does not need a very fast crank to start. If it did, the hand crank would be useless.

I say change the starter fields to 12V configuration, it will still perform much stronger and crank way faster than a 6V starter on 6V. You will also experience much less voltage drop to the ignition circuit during cranking.