Starter woes

[pontiacfan18]

Turning the key and hearing horrible noises. Started like this...

85' GP, *thought* I had it ready to drive today but forgot about this problem. It's an automatic with a 200-4R. I had a starter on there that worked great...but I dropped it off my work bench and the casing and solenoid cracked (???..yeah idk). I would've replaced it with the same thing but it had no markings on it what-so-ever. Now from what I understand, the 168 tooth flex is 14" and the 153 tooth one is 12.75 in. Mine is on the car so it's hard to measure, but about 1/3'd of the way up, the diameter is over 12", so I'm guessing I have the 14 in. one. The starter that worked also had a staggered bolt pattern.

The starter on there now makes all sorts of horrible grinding noises...doesn't engage right. Tried it with 0, 1 and 2 shims..no luck. I'm going to order a new one from summmit. Anyone have any similar experiences and can help me find what I need?

PS - It did manage to start once, and sounded/ran great, so i'm 99.9% sure this is related entirely to the starter.

Thanks in advance.
-Mike

 

[454muscle]

Cracked starter housing means if you try to start it the gear won't fully engage because it will keep pusing back, slipping off and will damage your ring gear, so don't keep trying to start it with a broken starter housing. If your ring gear is damaged on the flywheel you will have bigger problems! Just FYI. 😉

 

[pontiacfan18]

Whoh whoh, I'm not that much of a newb :wink:

I should've mentioned...the starter I have on there now is a new one meant for a 75 Camaro Vin H (which should have the staggered bolt pattern, 168 tooth flexplate). But it just doesn't engage correctly. When it does, it turns realllllyy slow. Battery is charged up and all grounds are good, I've moved them around a few times and still the same thing, so I'm almost certain it's the starter...just not sure what the problem is. No amount of no shims, or shims seems to help. But the original starter that was on there, all 150k+ miles seemed to work fine :-\ Any ideas?

-Mike

 

[pontiacfan18]

Anyone have any ideas 🙁 Forgot to mention, only tried to start it 3 times. 1st time it turned over good, 2nd it turned reallyyy slow and didn't sound good, 3rd it engaged but wouldn't turn and didn't sound good. I know the battery is old as hell, and the time it did turn (1st) it was fresh off the charger. I'm defly going to replace the battery, but I want to just do a new starter too so I'm sure it's good. Basically what I'm asking is...is there any way to test the starter manually? Can I pull out the gear and see how it lines up to the flexplate?

Thanks,
-Mike