gawd awful noise

[dfitz]

Every now and then my starter seems like it is not catching the ring gear. The motor is not turning over but there is this hellacious screetching/grinding sound. After a couple of trys it catches and works ok. This only happens every day or so.
Any ideas?

[Jim Barbero]

Are the starter bolts tight?

[Maynard]

sounds like you might have a stripped ring gear, I dont have much experience in this, but maybe.

[andy d]

if you're lucky it's a bad starter drive. more likely its a few chewed teeth on the ring gear. if its a bad starter gear, then it will be a bad ring gear soon. if there is an inspection plate, start inspecting.

[Rogue]

flywheel ring gear alright, what kind of starter you got? the ford style to the best of my knowledge isn't adjustable. this is a common thing for chevy engines when the starter isn't shimmed correctly so after inspection/replacement make sure whatever kind of starter you have is mounted correctly to prevent future problems

[bentpushrod]

I second the "check your starter bolts". Had the same problem on a 460. Didn't check them and thought I had flexplate, starter teeth issues. So I would crawl underneath and turn the crank over a bit, and try again. Sometimes it would catch, sometimes it wouldn't. Then my brain woke up and I checked the starter bolts. **** thing was barely hanging on. Besides, once your under there if the starter bolts are tight, you can go on and check the flexplate/flywheel.

[okidoc]

FLex plate is bad. About $400-600 to have a shop do it, or 25-50 for a new flexplate and at least six hours to drop tranny back, line up the holes and retorque everything. ASk me how I know. Ow! my shoulders still hurt, sorry I'm whining again.

[Crazy_Jeepman]

Yup a bad spot on the flexplate/flywheel. Pull starter and have someone rotate motor by the balancer bolt, socket and a ratchet for that. Use a light and watch for bad teeth once this is verified you will need to pull the trany and replace it. I would also replace the starter as well, or at least the starter drive. It is possible that it is only the starter drive, but doubt it. :eek:

[L. Vargas]

Bring it by, I just did one in a Honcho yesterday. I had to replace the bendix in the starter also.

Sounds just like your describing. We had to rotate the engine just right, in order to get it to start to pull in the shop.

Good luck

[jeepbob]

You prolly just have a starter problem. The Ford starters have a contact point set that is broken when the bendix is fully engaged. When these wear out the starter motor will start to spin before the bendix is engaged causing the gawd awful noise you are hearing. If let go the ring gear will be destroyed so replace the starter. The purpose of the point set is to shut down the electro magnet circut that pulls in the bendix and feed the motor winding circut to spin the motor. The motor winding circut has enough magnetic power to hold the bendix in but not enough to pull it in so that is why the second circut is used and this is also why the Ford style starters require more power to operate than the GM style.