Hey guys. So I took the front clip off to clean and refurbish the engine a bit. Took a few days of pressure washing, wire brushing, degreasing and prepping for paint. Pulled the exhaust and intake manifolds to be prepped and painted separately. Now that's it's all back together looking pretty with fresh gaskets, I'm having trouble getting the starter to engage. I know how normal starters function but I'm to understand that yblock starters are "normal" So, here are my symptoms. Keep in mind!!! Starter turned the engine over and fired it up with a bump of the key prior to cleaning and has not been removed or messed with.
With the key- nothing (4 post solenoid isn't mounted so no ground)
Jumping the terminals- starter spins and it should, but it's not engaging the flywheel like it was.
I have another solenoid that I'll probably firewall mount today and reroute wiring to clean it up a bit but I figured I'd see if anyone had some insight before I pull off the starter to bench test by the manual.
See pictures engine ****.

 

Not sure exactly what you mean with the symptoms you describe, though with all that pretty new paint, make sure the starter and block mating surfaces are clean bright shiny metal, solid electrical grounding is important, or it won't spool up fast enough.

 

Starter wasn't off of the engine so essentially this issue showed up out of no where

 

Hm. Did the starter innards get soaked? What is the starter RPM when cranking? I think 150 is spec, I'd have to look it up, but if it's slow the starter bendix won't kick out to engage with the ring gear. Just some things to think about.

 

I didn't even think about that. I used a roughly 16 gauge wire to jump the terminals on the solenoid so it's possible that it's just not getting enough juice to spin fast enough. I took care to keep water out from where it shouldn't be but it's always a possibility I guess. I'm not even sure on the procedure or tools required to test the rpms of the starter. I'm sure I don't have them ha

 

Just a standard tachometer. I looked it up, spec is 150-180 RPM. Maybe this isn't the problem, but it's something else to rule out.

 

Completely bypassed the solenoid and hooked hot to starter. Definitely spun faster. I'll probably just go over the wiring real quick to make sure I'm not missing something silly.

But shouldn't the starter at least try to engage and crank the engine when power is applied to it? Basically the bendix is mechanical so it shouldn't need voltage from somewhere else applied to it to spoil, right?

 

I had this issue a long time ago.

The starter would try to engage and it would just catch the teeth on the flywheel. It was destroying the flywheel gears and the starter bendix gear. It was a newly built engine and transmission so I assumed the starter was either installed incorrectly, set at the wrong depth or there was an alignment issue.

Turns out, it wasn't a mechanical problem at all. It was electrical.

When I installed the new engine, I reused the old ground cable, which turned out to have more resistance than it was supposed to. The starter was getting less power than it needed to work properly. It was good enough to turn over the starter, but not enough to throw the bendix out as far as it was supposed to go to engage the flywheel, which is why I thought it was a mechanical issue. I installed new ground cables to the engine, battery and frame, and it immediately resolved my problem.

So, check your grounds, especially since you've been cleaning and painting. Might save some frustration.

Good luck.

 

Yes totally mechanical. But it needs to spool up fast enough, it's called "inertia-starter drive" aka Bendix. Could try pulling starter and drive and clean it up. Lube with graphite.

 

Good point about cables & ground points. If they are original, or even just kinda old, they need to be replaced.

 

Pulled the starter. Looks pretty clean and seems to function properly. While playing around with I managed to get it into this position (engaged?). It came out of the truck in the rearward (disengaged?) position. I notice these come new in the pictured position. If that's the case then I would assume that's the orientation that it needs to be installed. And if that's the case, how did go from the working position to the not working position without any obvious cause while it was in the truck? Thoughts?

 

The starter drive locks into position when spooled up, engages with the flywheel, engine starts and kicks it out of the locked position.

Some starter/engine combos, the starter can't be installed with the bendix drive engaged, on Y-Blocks it doesn't make any difference. Motor repair shops sometimes used to get annoyed with customers when somebody (always) fiddle-faddled with their brand new starter drive and charged .50c to unlock it again. LOL! If you have a bench motor with a wire brush or something like that, can unlock it if you spool it up that way. Another trick is to break off pencil lead in the grooves and twist it back. Just some starter drive Trivia, that I'm sure you're interested in ha ha. Like I said though, with Y-Blocks it doesn't care. I've always installed them in the "engaged" position I guess. Try it and see? It shouldn't matter.

 

Haha 50 cents. Gotta love inflation. I don't have excess low gauge wires to run it directly off of the battery. At this point I should be able throw the starter back into the truck, and since it's currently in the engaged position it should crank the engine over just fine, correct? Only unfortunate byproduct would be if the bendix isn't operating correctly, it wouldn't reset after the first start.
I don't mind. I need to make sure everything runs okay. I just can't keep putting more money into it otherwise it's going to overshoot the trade value for the tractor I'm looking to trade for haha

 

I don't really understand how the starter drive works, but the whole starter itself can physically be installed on a Y-block with the starter drive in either position. Whether it will actually work or not, I dunno.

 

Pull the shield band off and look at your brushes. My 390 has that kind of starter and it started acting up. I tried to change the brushes but couldn't get it reassembled and bought another one.