dunmore, I've had a Sears unit for about 4 years, and have had good service from it. It has a small compressor, worklight, and both AC and DC outlets. I jump-start some piece of equipment every week with it, and carry it in my car to help folks out that are stranded at 7-11 with a dead battery or low tire. It has seen LOTS of use. I don't know the model number, but it retails for around $100 (maybe $120), and is sometimes offered on sale for about $80 - $90. If it dies tomorrow, I will buy another one immediately. CONS: heavy; jumper cables are only 18" - 2' long.

Also note the word "little" regarding lube for the shaft.Usually the difficulty is that the gear is not traveling down the shaft. Hence why Bill noted to check for a burr. At times the pinion itself is worn or the drive disc inside is glazed. Many of these pinions have a rubber disc above the metal drive disc at the bottom of the gear. Lube there and you will be dead in the water, er snow. A very light , non gumming lube is what you want. Standard silicone is great. The best repair is to actually take the starter off removing the gear to clean the rust away before lubing, but you may get by doing it on the machine carefully as described above.

During a long power failure a few years back I ran essential household items (under 300 watts total) off an an inverter connected to one of those rechargeable battery packs. I would recharge it periodically off of a vehicle while driving. They work okay for jump starting a car if the car is the battery is not too far gone - like the Caddy mentioned by JohnDeere, where it sits and the voltage gets a little too low to start it. In super cold weather it would help a lot if the battery pack was warm when you used it - for instance if it was in a warm house or another heated vehicle immediately before you took it out to use it. A big problem with jump starting is that often the connection between the booster battery and the battery in the dead vehicle is poor, and with 12 volts you need a good connection to get enough amps through to do the job. So sometimes you need another vehicle with the engine running, and then leave it hooked up long enough to charge the dead battery some, because you cannot get enough amps through the connection you have to actually turn the starter on the vehicle with the dead battery.

Probably hard to imagine, but you're making definite progress! You've eliminated the starter and solenoid and ignition switch. That's what troubleshooting is all about, "eliminate, eliminate, and finally you're there!" Now, IMHO, you're looking at a weak battery, did you load test it or have it done? Or, the engine isn't charging the battery after starting. Starting it two to three times would definitely draw down one of these little batteries. You have a meter, with the engine running, measure the + and - at the battery, you should have at least 13+ VDC at full throttle. If you're only reading 12VDC, that's battery terminal voltage which indicates no charging voltage. In other words, the battery is sitting there at 12Volts, the engine has to put more than 12Volts in to charge it. Report back on this reading and we can proceed to looking for a "leakage path" which is robbing charging current/ drawing down the battery. If there is no leakage path, then we look into the charging ciruit itself. Diodes or cowling mounted rectifier/chargers are relatively cheap. Hang in there. :-) Ev