You know your car is getting old when its teeth start falling out.
If you put the new starter in and it can grab the ring and operate from the bad spot, it's no biggie and worth a try at least. If it works, then you're doing fine (no loss there, huh?). If it won't, you can manually spin the flywheel around so that it can grab other teeth. You then have a one in 8 (or is it one in 4 or 16?) chance that it will land on the dead spot each time you turn the car off, as the engine will most likely stop at the top/bottom of a compression cycle on one of the 8 pistons, handing you the same bad spot on the ring.
===============
Worst case scenario:
You jack the car up on jackstands.
You remove the driveshaft.
You support the engine, perhaps with a chain that goes over the top of the block to the front bumper brackets so that it will not tilt backwards (this is IMPORTANT). Without the trans behind it, you'll want it secured so that it does not tilt back and rip out of the motor mounts and dimple your firewall.
Take all spark plugs out of the engine, allowing you to rotate it freely without comression resistance.
put car in Neutral
Go to the bottom front of the bell housing and remove the 4 bolts that hold the torque convertor to the flex plate so that the torque convertor will go with the Trans and not spill trans fluid all over the place when you pull the trans out and it stays. That's important. You must rotate the flywheel to get to the four different bolts that are 90 degrees away from each other.
You get a really long extension and wobbly for your socket wrench, and sitting/laying underneath the car, you remove the bolts that hold the bell housing onto the rear of the engine block. Once you are down to the last bolt (on top), get your floor jack and put it under the trans pan. They make transmission jacks for this that may be rentable and are much better/safer to use. Please look into that if you plan to do this, as dropping a trans on yourself is considered bad form.
Wiggle the loose transmission backwards after removing the trans mount from the frame and the shift linkage and so forth, and remove it unless you can get it far back enough room to work between the torque convertor and the flywheel with the trans just scootched backwards. Murphys Law says no on that.
Remove flywheel.
Install the new flyweel that you've already procured and reverse the process. Use magic marker to write your name, date, and something witty on the new part before installing so that when it screws somone else, they'll know they have good company from the good old days.
Hang defunct flywheel on wall where you can see it to remind you what a pain in the butt it was to fix. Come over sometime and I'll show you my stash of parts that have royally screwed me in the past. I have my flywheel from my 71 Mark III out in the open, but nobody knows why but me (till now). I keep the worst component from each disaster for reasons that I am still exploring with my doctor. I have a lot of components.
<<OR>>
Spin the flywheel and inspect it. You should be able to access it from the bottom of the front of the bell housing? Is it roasted elsewhere or just that one spot?
Take it to a welder and have them weld on new steel material or even portions of another ring gear in the poor areas (want to bet there's more than one?) and then use a grinding tool, hacksaw or file to re-cut teeth into the material that was deposited by the welder onto the flywheel void. Think of it as an Imperial dental filling? Make sure that it's not imbalancing the wheel "too much".
How bad do you want to avoid pulling the trans? I'd do it this way if it were me, but I'm into escaping expense and pain if the part's going to be trashed anyway. Just remember that such schemes are brilliant when they work, and make you look and feel dumb when they don't. Ask me how I know.
<<OR>>
Go to a local trans place and have them pull the trans and replace the flywheel with the new one that you bring with you. Call around and ask what labor is to replace a flywheel. I bet it's worth not doing yourself. Maybe several hundred dollars not including the part??? Want to bet that this is the most logical and practical course?
<<OR>>
hire Mexicans to do it (Canadians I guess, if you live up north). You'll be sorry on that one, though.
-Kenyon
Rob P <fristpenny@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You may remember that my car has several issues. For one, the car would not always crank. Pursuant to instructions from Dick B and Dave Grove I used a test light on the relay and determined juice as getting to the starter. I ordered a mini-starter from Mancini. Well, when I finally got the old starter off I found out at least one tooth is missing off the ring gear. How big of a deal is this? The gear on the old starter is fine, but this can't be good. What am I supposed to do now? How the heck does this even happen?
I have some time to decide about this because the ear broke off the brand new ministarter when I was putting it on. Just past finger tight it just snapped. To Mancini's credit they said to ship it back and they will send a new one. Almost no questions asked. Needless to say, I spent the weekend on my back, cursing. Be glad
you don't live near me.
Rob
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