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Hi crew,
Took our ski boat out for it's maiden voyage as ours, got a good day's fun in before it wouldn't start at the river bank about 50m from the boat ramp (coulda been much worse!).
It's a 283 chev, the hull's a 1987 but it's not the original motor so I don't know what year the motor is.
It doesn't run a key to start, it's got an "on" rocker switch and a starter button.
All day it was screeching when starting, perhaps as if the starter was staying engaged after the motor started? The first couple of times it might have been because I didn't realise the motor had started and left my finger on the button too long, but after I realised it only needed about 2 cranks and adjusted my technique, it kept doing it.
The failure involved the starter spinning up fine but the bendix (apparently? got this from a mechanic mate) isn't engaging the starter gear with the flywheel. It comes out about halfway, possibly even touching the flywheel, but not far enough.
Any clues as to how to fix it?

Cheers
paro

Hi Paro,
Mate I dont know about how much room you have around the engine,
But i suggest you remove the starter motor and have a spy at the ring- gear. (Remove negative battery clamp or lead from battery before anything else.)

Try to turn the engine over by hand so you can check the entire ring gear.
Teeth should be angled evenly and have no burs in side the "vee" or valley which would prevent your starter from engaging. Some times a few teeth can be bent / missing / damaged and give you dramas.

If ring gear is o.k.

Have a gander at the drive on your starter, it to should have no burs, teeth straight, evenly spaced and none missing.

If the above all checks out, start to suspect your starter motor, There is a process for bench testing this at home, but I'm not going to recommend it, as there is the potential for injury if your not careful.

If the bendix and starter gear are only part engaging then its possible that the bendix may be a little dry where it slides along the starter shaft.It could also be a sticky/dry solenoid as well.

Bendix may also be stuffed as they aren't designed to be driven by the motor for example holding in the start position whilst the engine is running.

They do have a clutch of sorts to stop the armature itself from being driven by the engine and exploding but the bendix itself will still spin and even at a 500 rpm idles speed it would, if engaged to the ring gear, spin at around 10 000 rpm ( at a guess without sitting down and working out the starter to ring gear ratio )

Also possible that the ring gear teeth are buggered and the starter is finding it impossible to engage the teeth properly and simply just grinding away.

Another possibility but probably not one that usually happens is the starter to ring gear alignment is out of whack.

Thanks for the advice guys.
I'm going to check the mounting and alignment and also the condition of the teeth on the flywheel and the bendix.
If they appear ok I'll take the starter off and check the bendix operation.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Well the problem was with the ring gear




Got that replaced and before we put the flywheel back on I thought we'd just check the starter motor and look what we found




Is that housing a replaceable item or do I need a new starter motor?

paro

You might be able to buy one , try Ashdown Ingram or Coventrys .

squeeze it together and weld it