A Tale of Two Starters

Or "What's up with all the starter troubles???"

I had been getting estimates on the removal of the pepper tree near the edge of our property. It grows like a weed, and regularly encroaches on the neighbor's house. Incidentally, this is the same end of the property that has the driveway, and the tree is at the end of the driveway. And the driveway is full of cars. A few weeks back I was going to take the Falcon down to my parents house and do some work on it there, and possibly get it two-toned. However, the starter was acting up. Actually, the starter sounds like it has a handful of gravel thrown in.

This morning, after taking the oldest boy to a breakfast fundraiser, I exchanged an old Ford starter I had sitting in the basement (possibly from the original six cylinder that used to be in the Falcon, it looked slightly different) so I wouldn't have to do that while I'm greasy.



Last Wednesday, after my wife took the boys to school, Janice wouldn't start up again. Didn't even crank, just did a click, and nothing more. Hmmmm, I've had something like this happen before... and it ended up being the better part of a year before she was back on the road!!! Only thing was, this time she didn't crank right before she stopped. I would try the starter, and it would click but not turn, and make a rather faint high pitched squeak, perhaps like something was slipping. Anyway, I had the idea, as I'd had last time, that the engine got on a compression stroke and the starter didn't have quite enough to kick it past there. Instead of cranking it back as I'd done last time, I had the brilliant idea of pulling the glow plugs out to relieve the pressure. I'd remembered them as being much easier to remove last time I'd worked on her. Got them out, and it still did the same thing. The main reason I'd been avoiding just pulling out the starter is that it's a major pain to do so. It requires every one of my socket extensions to be used from the opposite end of the transmission. After putting the glow plugs back in (and breaking one terminal off and losing one of their little nuts) I finally relented and went ahead and pulled the starter out. Lo and behold, it does the same thing with no engine load on it!!!

Of course, I'd asked wifey which car I should work on first, and she'd opted for Janice. By the time I'd gotten everything back together and cleaned up, it was nearing full dark. And I'd been thinking I'd be able to get the grass mowed today, it's full of weeds and really has liked all the rain we've had in the last couple of months.

So that's what happened today, I got one new starter, which I didn't get put in, and I got one old starter that doesn't work pulled out.