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Sorry, I didn't pay attention that you were putting a 54 starter on your 53. Ain't no way that poor little switch on the side of the carb and light gage wiring are going to fire that thing. You will need a relay, or to add a pushbutton.

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I semi-rebuilt mine. I didn't completely disassemble the solenoid, but did as much as I could and cleaned the contacts. The main issue for me were the brushes and battery cables.

Going off Ross's comment, the wiring on the '54 from the ignition switch to the solenoid is 10 gauge. On the '53 wiring diagrams it looks like the wires going to the carb switch are 16 gauge. That's quite a difference.

If you want to keep the car mostly stock I would also suggest adding a 30 amp cube type relay as Ross mentioned and use larger wire between the relay and solenoid. You could mount and sort of hide the relay behind the starter or solenoid and have the carb switch and original wire operate the relay. 54s were started from the ign switch but even the switch contact could barely take the load of the big solenoids. 54-6 key start ign switches used on senior models with the pinion shift starters are known failure items and even they could benefit from a relay to take the large solenoid load out of the switch.

Here is a typical example of what happens to the 54-6 ign switch. The small starter contact is just a raised rounded area formed by pressing it into the fairly thin flat piece. On this switch heat has melted thru the contact and also melted the corresponding contact spot on the movable plate. The black spot is a hole letting the bakelite show thru the melted raised area.

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Thanks for setting me straight, I didn't think that the amperage requirements of the solenoid would differ between the 53 and 54 starter that I happened upon as a spare.
I think I will just take my time and rebuild the 53 starter. I don't want to start modifying things too much with an additional relay.

Putting in the proper starter is what I would do too as cludging things with relays isn’t a fix in my book and just adds unneeded complications.

I took out that dreadfull 54 starter and put my 53 starter back in this morning. Before installing, I cleaned the contacts on the solenoid and put on fresh lock washers.
She turns over a little faster already, and I drove with the family on a 45 mile roundtrip to a saloon for Lunch. Indicated 65-70 mph on the autobahn is comfy.
A friend is bringing me new bushings from a napa in detroit next week, so I will put those in and see if the starter is more reliable. I'll be in the US in August, so I hope I can wait Till then for a complete rebuild.

Carla Caribbean as we have started calling her is doing a good job of bringing kids to play dates, swimming lessons and bringing me to the beer distributor. The starter is behaving better after a clean up, but will still get attended to soon. Re-doing the rear axle seals at the wheel bearings has now increased in priority. I found oil on the passenger rear wheel.
I did this job on the clipper years ago. Are the bearings the same?
Race: 26830
Bearing:26878 from timken?
I have a 4:10 rear axle so am not sure if the caribbean is senior or junior Status in this respect.

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A '53 is built on a 250 chassis and was not considered a senior car until '54 when it got the senior motor.

But the parts manual should tell the tale.

Online parts book works well! I'll use it more in the future!

shaft bearing

Same part for pretty much all 26 series cars.

I started diging into the rear axle today, but got stuck on the First drum. I have a good Hazet puller, and tightened it up with a long wrench, but the drum has not yet popped off. The nut is still on, but loose. I left the puller on overnight. Maybe it will Pop off overnight. I had to use the E brake to hold everything from turning, and then tighten the puller, then Release the brake...I couldn't start hammering on the puller, it was too late to make noise.
You can see how bad she was leaking gear oil onto the drum.

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