ARB Solenoid Substitue

Don't know if this has ever been posted but my arb solenoild took a crap on me and looking around the net I found them to be about $60 to replace. Some more searching and I found out there is a cheaper substitue solenoid made by Mac Valves.

For around $20 I decided to give it a shot, works perfectly fine.
Of course if you wanted to go the manual route you can get one of these for around $30 from gulfcoastrovers.com, maybe alot cheaper from Grainger or Mcmaster Carr.


Mods feel free to delete this if it has already been covered.

So what where the symptoms of the one that went bad?

One of mine was stuck open, so I took it apart, cleaned it and resembled and it’s worked great every since. Dirt worked its way in, the ARB design with that plastic screw cap on the top is kind of flimsy and doesn’t sealed that great if you ask me.

How does this one hold the solenoid on and seal in comparison? Where did you buy from ? For the $ looks to be a good spare one at least.

Was getting power to the solenoid, but the valve would not open. Took it apart (solenoid and valve assembly) and cleaned everything with contact cleaner, put everything back together and still had no luck. The valve assembly appears to look and operate fine and I have power going to the solenoid, so I guess the solenoid took a crap somehow.

Did some searching and found this substitute solenoid

I actually got mine from an e-bay seller ($40 for 4 of them) who gets them used from medical machines in a hospital. He says he's got more, here's his "link" (might have to e-mail him if it's not posted on his e-bay sight)

On the mac valve solenoid, the solenoid part is attached to the body of the valve by 2 screws and looks to be well sealed unlike the arb one so no dirt can get in that way. I recall reading somewhere that arb used these (mac valve solenoids) in their very early years of production and later went with their own brand, but can't remember where I read it at...

In short it's a savings of about $20 from the arb solenoid, plus I've got the other 3 as spares.

Have to keep this in mind just incase mine fails.