'52 WD - Starter concern

beckntrav wrote: Question: does the starter engage with the flywheel ring gear? I'm thinking about ordering one.

Hee hee... well, at least two out of three times it does... the other times, it goes "Clank-Grind"...

Several things cause this, and usually, the conditions work together to make life miserable.

First, make sure your battery and cables are in tip-top shape. Poor connections in the circuit, and cables that are rotted deep inside the insulation, and at junctions, will limit current and cause the starter motor to be 'out of breath'... and it won't slap the bendix hard enough to fully seat the teeth.

Next, if the bendix is worn, or someone put a heap'a grease on it, it'll be generally bad about kicking in and out. If the starter motor's brushes and commutator are worn, or if the bushings are worn, it'll have bad connection and not carry current well.

Finally, the ring gear and pinion wear will only continue to get worse. Since the engine hits a compression stroke every 180 degrees, the crank will USUALLY stop in about the same position every time... about 45 degrees BEFORE a TDC event on one of the cylinders. This means that the starter is always smacking the same two areas of the ring gear every time you crank it. If you look at a ring gear when it's sitting on the bench, you'll see that it's got two areas of lots of wear, and two that are practically untouched. You can do one of two things... first, is replace the ring gear, and the other, if it's not missing entire teeth... is to mark the ring gear and flywheel, knock the ring gear off, and rotate it 90 degrees, and put it back on... then replace the worn pinion on the starter, it'll go another 50+ years happily.