I spent a few hours yesterday messing around with my new build trying to get it to run. After killing a cheap ebay starter, then fixing a few other unrelated, minor issues, and replacing the starter, we gave it anotehr go. But just as we did, the starter stopped engaging my flywheel and would just spin on it's own. The only way to make it stop was the disconnect the battery cable.

I had an old starter do this in the past, but it wouldn't continue to free-wheel after I reconnected the cable. Replacing the old starter fixed that, and this is a new starter so I do intend on having it checked out.

The only curious thing is that for some reason if I connect the purple wire (it goes to the one terminal on the starter by itself, not sure what it does exactly, but I'm thinknig it controls the starter motor since I've found out that if that is touching one of the other terminals it can complete a circuit and the starter will just run on it's own.

So I tested that wire to ground with a multimeter and it's always on for some reason. I'm assuming that purple wire should NOT be hot unless the ignition switch is in the cranking position....

So Im guessing either the problem is that the wire is shorting against another hot wire... or my ignition switch is hanging up.

Does this sound like a fairly accurate diagnosis to you guys? Just trying to figure out what my course of action should be from here since id ont completely understand how the electrical circuits for the starter work on tehse cars. I've been looking for an excuse to put a pushbutton start in it, but I'm not even sure which wires I need to tap for something like that to bypass the ignition switch. But my main goal is to diagnose my starter issue first. Is it possible the starter has an internal short?