Not All Teeth Can Be Crowned: Your Guide To Starting Preventative Care, Pt. 1

Hey, who wants to rebuild a starter?  Kinda.  When I saw my drive gear was messed up, I searched around the parts haus sites in my region and found that starter parts and rebuild kits aren't something the stores keep in their inventory.

That leads me to consider the possibility that people repairing starters (vs just buying a new one) is becoming a thing of the past, so I decided to put a walk-through of my efforts to replace the drive assembly in my starter.  Maybe this can one day be useful reference for some technophobe to find on the ultranet in the dim, robot-infested hell world we forge as the days go on.

We're going to be using the info in the '78 AMC technical service manual for reference, but the info should be generally applicable to starter designs that predate gear reduction drives, whether they be the Ford-type used on many AMC vehicles, or others.

Here's the exploded diagram of the motor we're working with:

And our disassembly, inspection, and assembly instructions (I'm not going to try uniformly formatting my images on a phone, and I'm not sorry):

Note that I've omitted the steps for other service procedures that are unrelated to replacing the drive assembly.  I've also gone ahead and posted the replacement and assembly instructions, since it's a good idea to review the steps for the entire process, start-to-finish, before beginning.  This helps to head off a lot of mistakes that can be expensive in both hours and cash.

Alright, so we've preheated our oven and measured out our ingredients, so all we need now is a starter.

As you can see, I've already taken his hat off, which is retained by the single screw that's resting inside it.  Next, the through bolts are removed.

The bolt on the left actually has a rubber sleeve under all the rust.  I brushed it off and kept it fitted on the bolt shaft.  The next step is to remove the brush end plate, springs, and holder/insulator.

Note that there are slots in the brushes that the springs seat in.  Be careful when pulling the springs to make sure that you don't yank the brush out with it.  The brush coming out isn't a problem, but you don't want to chip the brush, or damage the braided conductor.

Also pay attention to the position of the recessed slot in the insulator.  That's a helpful keying reference during reassembly.

With the brushes and insulator removed, it's time to take the bellhouse off.  Mine required a couple light taps with a deadblow to the ears.  Not much; just enough for the seam where it mates with the case to spread just a bit.  After that, I took a flathead, set it in the slot in the picture below, and carefully rotated the tool to ease the bellhouse away from the case.

From there, everything comes apart pretty easily.  Make sure to watch out for the washers/bushing in the nose, shown next.

Pull the armature out and set the housing aside to inspect later.  I tested the clutch of the drive assembly as described in the manual - locked solid counter clockwise, rotated freely the other way.

To remove the drive assembly, you'll need to slip the lock ring off from the end of the armature shaft.  You'll then be left with the following parts.

Here's what my gear teeth looked like.  Surely not the worst, but I didn't want to go jamming that into my new flexplate.

The next step from here is to wait for the replacement drive assembly to be delivered at some point tomorrow.  If that happens as scheduled, I'll do a 2nd part to cover inspecting the other components and any gotchas for assembly.