bluegoose

Hello all,
I have a 383 with a 153 tooth fly wheel, anyway the starter is acting up, when i turn the key I hear the bendix hit the fly wheel but it wont turn the motor over. I looked at the bendix and the corner of all the teeth have a tapered flat spot and when I pull the bendix out and place it on the fly wheel, only one tooth from the bendix is 100% in the flywheel the other, the other two teeth barly hit the fly wheel, so the starter is only using one tooth from bendix to start my motor. How can I adjust this, is there some instructions I can d/l with pics (i'm old and hate reading hahahaha) to show me how to adjust this mini starter. Thanks in advance....

Brad

Damon

The beveled edge is normal- it's how the teeth line themselves up to mesh as the bendix throws the spur gear at the ring gear. The spur gear is small enough that it really only grabs about one and a half teeth at a time against the ring gear. It's how deeply the two mesh together when they're engaged that matters. With the gears completely engaged you should be able to shove a paperclip wire between them at the tip of the spur gear tooth. Enough clearance that they're not bottoming out against eachother, not so much that they're loosey-goosey.

Opening up more clearance is easy- you put shims between the starter and the block (they make shims of various thicknesses for this exact purpose). Getting it tighter..... well, there's no easy way to do that.

I had a mini-starter recently that would just go "click" but not turn over, similar to what you describe. The spur gear whould hit the edge of the ring gear but not engage. I tried shimming it all over the place, but no dice. Turned out the spur gear on the starter was just machined wrong (the teeth were too "fat" with not enough bevel) and the only way to fix it was with a new starter (exact same type, but it worked perfectly after that- they had redesigned the spur gear).

bluegoose

I figured someone would tell me its time to shim, well I guess I will be working on this weekend, the bendix, when I manually push it into the flywheel looks good, but sometimes the motor will be spinning, (wanting to start) then all of the sudden the bendix will just free spin, not engagued with flywheel. I can not get starter any closer to flywheel, any ideas on this???

Thanks
Brad


ps will work on it when really cold, dont like my arms and hands around hot headers!!

transbird86

what brand mini-starter, did you put shims in when you installed it.

bluegoose

I dont know the brand, but I did add some various shims, but what happens now is that:

1. When cold start, outside cold the 1st time I turn the starter is just spins,

2. 2nd time I start the motor the bendix engages flywheel and spins to start car

So back to drawing board, its really hard to keep bendix engaged in flywheel to look for correct clearance (sp) any idea or tricks on how to do this...

Thanks

Damon

With the motor stopped you just put a screwdriver behind the gear and lever it out into mesh with the ring gear teeth manually.