crapped out starter?

Elan Discussions
1

Hi Folks-

I am trying to start the elan an am getting this horrible grinding sound coming from the starter. Sounds like metal against metal. I had someone check the belts and while the starter is churning away the motor is not turning. I can turn the motor with a wrench.

My plan is to pull the starter and see if I trashed the gears. Hopefully I did not trash the flywheel. Any other suggestions?

robb

2

Rob is the starter a Lucas or a Denso ???ed

3

i have one piece of advice. get a modern reduction starter. best single thing i ever did on the car. you can keep your bendix starter on the shelf for originality, but it sucks in a way that really isn’t charming. What’s more, the new ones are very Lotus-correct in that you’ll save weight too.

4

Robb,

You may have lost some teeth on the flywheel. Put the car in gear and push it just enough to rotate the engine a little and then try starting it again.

If the starter engages, you’ve got a bad ring gear. You may be able to avoid replacing the ring gear by switching to a gear reduction starter because this kind of starter attacks the ring gear from the front. It’s also a lot easier on what’s left of your ring gear.

If the starter remains the same, you’ve got a bad starter. Before you spend good money having it rebuilt, you’d still be better off applying the rebuild money towards a gear reduction starter.

Let us know what you find out. Good luck.

5

First, make sure your operable battery is charged fully. Are all your cables tight? Is the starter tight? Are you sure? Now, if you still get grinding noises, buy a new improved gear reduction starter. While installing the new starter, fully inspect the flywheel teeth. Rotate it twice at least. Let us know what you see. Thanks, Eric

6

Thanks everyone! I installed a new nippondenso starter last year- put the lucas on the spare parts shelf where it belongs.

I also manually rotated the motor/flywheel with a wrench and the car in neutral- would that have been good enough to test for broken flywheel teeth?

Robb

7

My guess would be that the bendix is slipping (internally)

8

Yes.

9

Robb

“I also manually rotated the motor/flywheel with a wrench and the car in neutral- would that have been good enough to test for broken flywheel teeth?”

I take it by that you mean that you visually checked the teeth through he starter aperture while rotating the crank?

John :wink:

10

ok we covered this on another thread -----my denso starter made the same noise you describe —the cause was the bolts that go through the adapter to the starter were too short and had stripped out of the main body treads causing a misalignment ----pull the starter and get 2 longer bolts -----I was stubborn enough to wait until the denso part had separated from the adaptor and swung free on the wire ----ed

11

Thanks Ed - that was the problem and it is now fixed.

Rpbb