Gosh darn it... It's not worth stressing over this stupid starter. Everything was going smoothly at first. I got it off the truck, cleaned it, and installed the new larger contacts and plunger in no time.

Then the brushes... My 100w soldering gun wasn't enough. So I go out to Harbor Freight and get a pencil torch. The pencil torch dies within the first 2 minutes (going to take it back tomorrow). So I go to Wal Mart and get another pencil torch, this time by Benzomatic with a hefty price tag. But it works good. I'm happy. I manage to get the 2 ground brushes on pretty easily. Then the field brushes... Why won't they go on!!! The solder doesn't stick very well and it's really hard to get them positioned so that the copper wire doesn't ground out. Not to mention the short length of the brush wire. Any tips from those who have done this? This crappy 1 hour job is taking too much time and boiling my blood.



Sorry just had to vent a little.

 

Try buying a desolder tool or copper braid from radio shack to remove the old solder. scuff sand any copper then clean it up with some brake / electrical cleaner and use some solder flux on both surfaces. heat the surface and feed the solder into the hot surface.
flux will help the stuff stick and cleaning up the surfaces will get any oxidized junk out of there to make the job easier. Any copper you are soldering should be sanded a little to get any oxidation off.

 

Thanks Kawi. Well I got it on tonight and re-installed it in the truck. Works great. Turns out that I had the brush holder assembly on backwards... Guess what, the brush holder in 2nd gen starters go in the opposite way of 1st gen starters. I was looking at this thread and had it confused:

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...tarter+rebuild