Starter not engageing flywheel?

[dlotz]

SO when I connected the trans/bell/starter to the block I checked to make sure the starter shaft was long enough for the starter gear to travel down and reach the flywheel and it did when I moved the starter gear down the shaft with my fingers.

Now the motor is in and wiring hooked so up I decided to give it a bump to see if it would engage and try to turn over.......
It didn't! @^#%&!*

All I heard when I turned the key was one 'loud' click from the remote solenoid on the firewall and then a faint spinning sound. Not the turn over sound I was expecting.

It sounds as if the starter gear is not traveling 'out' far enough to grab the flywheel OR it is traveling out far enought but the gear is to small to engage the flywheel.

I have the Quicktime 6056 bell, Ram flywheel for FE and a plain starter from autozone for a 65 Galaxie 500 (Ford 427 big block)

Any thoughts??? Crappy starter? Not enough voltage to the starter?

[blykins]

How many teeth on the flywheel?

[Gunner]

I think a starter would engage even with a wrong tooth count - it might engage irregularly, or make horrid noises, or even break some flywheel teeth, but a count or two off wouldn't entirely prevent engagement.

A "faint spinning noise" sounds like a starter that's not engaging anything at all. I'd guess wrong starter, faulty starter, or not enough current to throw the pinion forward.

[blykins]

Gunner, you're probably right, but just wanted to see what the combo was, just in case there was a big mismatch somewhere.

I've ran into this with aftermarket starters where the wiring was hooked up wrong. Starter would spin but not kick out.

[Ron61]

I would go along with Gunner on this one. If the starter is good and you have good voltage, even if it didn't engage you should get a good spinning noise. If you have a remote starter, hook it up and get under the car by the starter and see if you can hear it even kick the shaft out toward the flywheel. I had that happen once on one of my regular cars and the starter windings were bad and it would just spin slowly and not even kick the gear out toward the flywheel. Mine was a brand new starter too and not a rebuilt one.

Ron

[patrickt]

Ernie was running the wrong tooth flywheel for years. I think it finally broke its teeth off last year.

[Excaliber]

,,,but until it broke it cranked the motor over everytime. Just sounded like hell compared to how smooth the new correct tooth count flywheel sounds. Get the NAPA starter, they have excellent gaurentee's, I replaced my starter many times before I figured out the ring gear tooth count was wrong. The NAPA guy really started to hate me before it was over. Kept breaking the starter gear teeth, the flywheel was mostly fine.

[dlotz]

Originally Posted by Gunner

A "faint spinning noise" sounds like a starter that's not engaging anything at all. I'd guess wrong starter, faulty starter, or not enough current to throw the pinion forward.

Might be low current. I did just run the wiring and might have something wored wrong. Plus the battery has been sitting for a few months so it might be a little low, maybe 10 or 11V.

My wiring diagram is in this thread. Yes I did wire the MSD to the IGN switch, I just forgot to draw in the wire on the diagram.
Can someone tell me what each post is??

[Gunner]

Even a mostly-dead battery will usually engage the starter - it might not turn, but it will try hard enough to do that sickening ga-runnnkk sound that tells you you need to call a tow truck. Just spinning... I'd fault the starter before anything else.

[Barry_R]

I agree that a Ford starter pretty much has to engage to spin at all. The internal swinging pole arm uses a "dead short" to throw the drive out and break the contact points open. The starter will not spin until this happens.

If the starter is spinning the drive is not contacting the flywheel. I currently have an out of country customer who recieved the wrong flywheel in a McLeod clutch kit we supplied. You need to have a 184 tooth FE flywheel. Its also sadly common for starter to have bad parts from the proverbial "get-go". That said, I've had really good luck with parts store starters on some really large FEs. I'll bet the starter drive is no good.....

[Gunner]

It should be trivial to remove the starter and see if the flywheel's ring gear is in the right place within the port (that is, not off center from being too small). Sounds like the starter has to come out anyway...

[dlotz]

So I pulled out the good ol' VM and took measurements at the Solenoid.

Solenoid ground to block has good continuity

Battery lead shows 10 Volts on Post "A", Post "B" shows zero volts

When I turn the key the "B" post to starter reads 2 Volts?

So I hooded the starter directly to the battery lead (1o volts) and I still get the faint spinning sound.

So I still have a starter problem, but now wonder if I also have a solenoid problem!

[Woodz428]

10 volts won't do sh!t. It will make the starter rotate slowly while not kicking the gear out. I have also seen a low battery "weld" the contacts within the solenoid and keep the starter cranking. It's WATTS that operate electrical devices...volts times amps. If the battery is too low it won't create enough amps to do the job, if it's just low enough you will get the watts from too much amperage draw and cause the solenoid to stick. A fully charged battery is 13.2 volts and 10 volts is waaaay shy. If you don't have at least 12 volts anything you attempt will give a poor result. Charge the battery before you start throwing things at it. 10 volts, you've got to be kidding.
If it hasn't been mentioned, make sure that you have a good ground to the block also. Insulated mounts have poor conductivity.

[Gunner]

That's an almost totally dead battery. Charge it, replace it, try borrowing the batt from your driver to check things out.

Also, check the voltage across the posts, both when it's idle and during cranking. If you show higher voltages than when checking between the + terminal and ground, you have a seriously weak ground connection.

[dlotz]

Just a dead battery, all connections were good/correct. Onec the batterty had a good charge on it I bumped the ignition and it engaged.

A few more little things to connect and I will be ready for first start in chassis!

[kobramustang]

dam bro im having the same problem as i type,just got motor overhauled,i connected ttransmission to engine,put the starter in all with a freind,and now the starter just spins,im charging the battery right now,i hope thats it,cause someone told me the engine shop might have put flywheel in backwards,not even sure if thats possible,on a manuel.

[Tim Brewer]

Just pull the starter, clamp it down on a bench and put correct voltage to it and see if it works there, or bring your starter to your local parts store and have them test it there.