I need some serious help here...or at least something to help me get on the right track.

Since I bought my truck there must have been starting motor issues. The prev. owner replaced the flexplate (which i know of) and the starter is "reman" so I am assuming he did that too. When you go to crank the motor the gears makes a terribly loud noise (not gear grinding) that you can hear from like 2 blocks away. I later found that the motor had a loose bolt holding it on. Every so often the starter would bind up but I would manage to get it started some way or another.

SO i fixed all that and even shimmed it out with washers to see if that helped. Nothing. It is still noisy and would occasionally bind up but this time it was a little easier to get past the binding spot.

THEN last night I shut the truck off as the gas station, fueled up and restarted it to no availability. The starter cranks for a split second then hums as if it was a transformer. Obviously its binding...and overdrawing current hence the hum.

SO i push it to the side, wait a while, tap the starter, loosen bolts, tighten battery bolt and basically try anything to get it started. Finally I got her to crank over. It started right up however it was making a 'ticking' noise. I thought maybe I did something when I was playing with the starter but the noise increased with RPM as I revved it up as if it was a lifter tap or possibly a rod knock. I think it was too quiet to be a rod knock.

Any thoughts on this? First, could a rod knock or lifter tap be in any way related to a binding starter? I mean could the starter binding be somehow related... or anyone have ideas on how to solve the noisy starter... GM used nice shims to shim the motor down from the flexplate. Fords shims only seems to move the unit
outward.

EDIT: the truck is the '84 f-150 w/ 302

Any help is much appreciated
Al

 

Gm used shims because the factory re-worked some of the blocks and that took more metal off the starter mount surface.

Ford starters usually never need shimmed. A few things to look out for on Fords;

Make sure you have a manual starter for a manual tranny/flywheel and a automatic starter for a automatic flexplate, they are different.

Get another rebuilt starter. Usually you are getting someone else's problems when you get a rebuilt starter. You may need to go through 2 or 3 till you finally get one that was turned in with no serious problems. I am not kidding about this. Sometimes you will find each rebuilt starter you get will give you it's own different set of problems.