I completely understand Jim, I often got that way when I'm tired too.
Small permanent magnet DC motors like these hyd. pumps and starters can easily be fed with a higher voltage and run fine, actually better as tm america pointed out. The only coil in a small DC motor like these is the armature, and it is such a low resistance that you can apply almost any higher voltage (within reason) and they run fine. This all goes back to the principals of operation of DC motors. As the motor speeds up it actually generates it's own voltage in the oposite direction to the applied voltage, this is called counter EMF. This voltage is fed back into the circuit and also helps to limit the amount of current needed to run the motor. That's why when a starter or little DC pump is first starting up, there is a huge draw of current which settles down by quite a bit after it has come up to speed (you will also see that huge current draw if you stop the rotor from turning, locked rotor). But it's this same phenomenon that makes it imperative that you never run a permanent magnet or series wound DC motor without a load applied. As the counter EMF increases it feeds that voltage and current back into the motor making it faster, if no load is in place to help keep the speed under control, the counter EMF will keep increasing and feeding more and more into the circuit until the motor would eventually spin itself fast enough to literally blow itself up. AC motors and their principals of operation are a whole diferent animal with a completely different set of rules.
