Brilliant and thorough post
I'm not much for forums, but I wanted to thank Porcupine for posting these detailed photos and instructions and help any other folks that encounter my exact problem with a few details.
The starter on my 93 legacy has been firing less and less frequently over the past 4 months (never any problems prior). First it was infrequent enough that I thought the carpet was in the way (it would miss a couple times, I'd move the carpet and it would work- thought it kept the clutch from fully depressing), but then it seemed like the steering wheel locking or not when I parked was the problem, etc. Appears now that that was all just random.
I jumped the clutch safety switches and that seemed to fix it- just thought the few times it didn't work were due to my paperclips needing adjusting, but then, in the past week, it started to only turn over about 20% of the time, so I just relied on voodoo, (pumping the clutch, wiggling the shifter and cranking the wheel) until in the last three days its only been turning over about 5% of the time. I gathered it was a connection, because it seemed like when the fog rolled in or the sun went down, it would go from not starting to turning over right away, but then wouldn't turn over again if the engine was hot, etc.
Today, I finally decided to deal with it, found this post, took off the solenoid connector (even wiggling this with a friend turning the key had no effect), and jumped directly from the positive terminal with a 14 gauge wire I had laying around- fired up no problem. I'm sure there are better solutions, but to get through the day with what I had, I sprayed the connector and terminal with WD40, scrubbed it a bit with my finger, and the car fired up 4 times in a row as if nothing was ever wrong. All together, web-searching for Porcupine's post, trying the easy solutions, then actually getting my hands dirty while at work took less than an hour.
I'll keep my fingers crossed that I didn't just hit the lottery several times in a row and that this very corroded looking connection was actually the culprit.
Thought I'd test before I posted this. After it sat for 30 minutes, it failed to start on 4 key turns... I sunk thinking perhaps I did just get lucky and rolled the starter into some position when I jumped it. I turned the wheel back and forth- old voodoo that had stopped working in recent days, and it started. I drove up into the sun and a hill in case it failed again, and it started intermittently a few times- about 50% in 6 attempts. I got out and pulled the terminal from the solenoid again, saw it was gunked with WD/grease/old corroded stuff, wiped it and put the wire back on several times, wiping the blade in between to clean that as much as possible. Started 8 out of 10 times, and I think the two misses were from trying to start too soon after shutting down- so far so good!
Yes make sure battery connections are good; the soob starter needs around 140 amps to crank... Does it crank with power applied directly to the starter solenoid?
