Hey Guys,

Had to replace the starter pinion gear (use to call it the Bendix gear). Figured as long as starter was out, I’d take a look. The starter was running on 3 brushes. Rebuilt the starter. Starter passed all bench tests: stator good, commutator good and no open circuits. Hooked it to battery on bench and thing jumped so hard it scared me...so I’m pretty sure the starter is ok. New bendix gear and the solenoid works. Here’s a video I posted on you tube:


any ideas on why this is happening? I took the starter back out and spun the gear in the transfer housing and the jack shaft and pinion turned...so I’m guessing that’s ok. I’m stumped. It’s like the bendix is hung up or the starter just doesn’t have enough oomph to turn the motor. Maybe it is the starter. I dunno. I even took the plugs out. I only changed two brushes. I couldn’t desolder the ones soldered to the starter motor frame. Would that kill the starter motor power?

The brushes were pre-formed with a curve to match the commutator. I polished the commutator but didn’t cut it. The starter motor spins when I hook jumper cables to it from a battery. It seems pretty robust. So you think the starter motor is suspect. Any suggestions?

Here’s my thought: you can hear the starter motor spinning while the pinion is locked on the clutch shell drive gear. The solenoid is pushing the pinion onto the clutch shell drive gear, but somewhere along the way it’s getting disconnected from the starter motor. The only place that could happen is in the starter drive housing. my guess is the jackshaft isn’t engaged on the drive gear. . But if that were the case, I don’t know if the primary cover would go back on. And it does the same thing with the primary cover on or off.

Still doing it. Glad it’s been crappy and raining here.

Panz...great minds think alike! Yeah, gonna look into that. Got a ten foot solid oak table to get out of my shop and to the customer. Wife wants pay-day!

Anyway, thanks for the reply. I’m going to take the gear drive apart because I sho-nuff don’t remember a thrust washer going in there and not having a thrust washer would cause this. I also didn’t remember there being a spacer on the pinion (jack-shaft for us old-timey types) shaft. So I held the pinion gear out with a screw driver and looked back there with a mirror and didn’t see a spacer. Soooo...gotta do some tearing apart.

this is weird: when I pulled the pinion out and slipped the screwdriver in, (see pic) the starter motor kicked on. What In The world would cause that? No, I didn’t touch the solenoid terminals. And there are no capacitors in this system. Ignition was off. Never heard of that.

Do you have a stock or aftermarket outer primary? Aftermarket primaries are often recessed where the starter shaft nut inserts. There are longer nuts available to remedy this.