So I went to start my truck a couple weeks ago and heard the horrible telltale grindng of metal against the flywheel...I knew that sound; broken starter gear.

So, I go to pull it off. I'm under the truck on my creeper with my feet towards the front. I get the solenoid wire off the top and the mounting bolt on the bottom. I start looking for the top bolt and see the hole where it should be but there's no head."WRUNG OFF!", I curse. (I've found SEVERAL wrung off bolts so far on my new project and this appeared to be just another.

So, I start disassembling the starter from the mounting housing; remove the long bolts, wrestle the starter of of its mount, pick up pieces that fall out and springs that sprung out.

Now I take the hammer and chisel to the mount and bang away at it. Finally the mount breaks and something hits me in the stomach...

Yep, it was the bolt head threaded in from the opposite side. The bottom bolt goes in facing the front and top bolt threads in from the other side facing the rear.

DOH!!

 

LMOA I take it this is the first one huh.

 

Sheeze...to think how a long bolt threaded in from the back side would actually hold. The whole reason for a head on a bolt is to create a push affect on a part to keep it in place. Don't worry, I've had my own aggravating starter moments too. Glad to hear you got it off.

OJ

 

oops.could have been worse.

 

the way some things are put together dosnt surprise me almost as bad as welding your starter cable to the starter seloind dont chuckle to hard i have seen it! at least you had access to it to fix it right you did not say what engine this was what i would like to know is how many people ever put the top bolt back in on a 390 3 bolt starter? i know i could never get it back in but 2 bolts and locktight worked fine

 

2 bolts and loc tite has held for the past 12 years just fine for me

 

Sorry for your lesson, But, That's Funny !!!

Starters can suck. Throw in a tight set of headers and then learn some new words.

 

This is a 400M.

The bottom bolt goes thru the starter mount housing pointing towards the REAR of the truck and threads into the bellhousing.

The top bolt goes thru the bellhousing pointing towards the FRONT of the truck and threads into the mounting bracket of the starter.

So, the bolt heads are on the opposite side from one another. When you're laying underneath looking at the bottom bolthead, it looks like the top bolt is wrung off...but, it's actually on the BACKside of the bellhousing.

I really felt dumb when that bolt hit me.