At 5:57 AM -0700 6/12/96, Paul g. Wiegman wrote:
>Thanks to those that offered a variety of suggestions and locations to
>repair/replace the starter in my TR3.
>
>In short, for those of you who are blessed with a "long nose" (starter
>that is), forget it !!!!!! Apparently they are not made, seldom rebuilt
>properly, and those that are out there may last anywhere from a day to
>10 years. Replacing one that can't be repaired is somewhat hopeless.
The tricky piece is the rubber torque coupling. Everything else can be
found or improvised fairly easily (well, unless your armature is toast).
You can build an acceptable (not great) torque coupling with the pieces of
your old one (assuming the gear is OK, but that is not the usual failure),
some serious high-temp oil-resistant epoxy, and, if necessary, a suspension
bushing of the right size as a source of new rubber. You use the epoxy to
bond the rubber to the steel as it was originally - works best if a)
everything is really clean, b) the rubber piece is tight enough to be a
compression fit before you get to the epoxy, and c) you cut some fine
grooves in the steel before you epoxy the rubber piece on.
These seemed to last about 2-3 years for me with moderate use of the car.
I'm sure someone who knows how rubber is really bonded to metal could do
better than this, but I fear that the answer is "vulcanize it in place" or
some such do-it-yourself trick.
BTW every once in a while you see people who claim to have real ones of
these for sale. I have never followed up, but the darn things -shouldn't-
be hard to make right, so I keep imagining that someone must be doing it
somewhere.
>I had several people tell me that the best solution is to replace the
>flywheel and use a newer model starter that can even still be purchased
>at a good parts store (Western Auto/Parts America was able to a 1959-on
>easily).
...but look before you leap. The early transmission housing has a shorter
"extdentation" for the starter. You can't put a short-nose starter on an
early car without also installing a later transmission.
-john
John Wroclawski
jtw@lcs.mit.edu
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