Tom Boggiano's jammed TR4 starter problem reminded me of the first LBC
that I ever owned, a '51 MG TD. When I first looked at the car, it had
a nice little tool kit and maintenance manual in the built-in storage
box under the hood. I bought the car about a week later but it wasn't
until sometime after that I noticed that the previous owner had removed
all of this stuff before selling the car. It wasn't too long before it
became obvious that I needed a set a tools and a manual. One of the
most annoying problems the car had was a tendency for the starter to
jam. I got pretty adept at finding parking places on slight inclines or
putting the car in gear and rocking it to unjam things. But convenient
parking spots weren't always available and sometimes no amount of
rocking seemed to do the trick and I would have to get someone to give
me a push to get the car rolling a bit before putting it into gear.
After becoming thoroughly fed up with this, I finally invested in a
minimal set of Whitworth tools and located a place that sold reprint
shop manuals.
I opened my new manual and started searching for the section on the
starter, hoping to find some sort of trouble-shooting guide with
suggested remedies. Sure enough, there was a paragraph on starter
jamming. So what was the fix? Very simple: It seems there was a
little dust cover on the front of the starter shaft which, when removed,
exposed a box head which could be turned with a special wrench that was
part of the tool kit that originally came with the car. I didn't have
that particular wrench, of course, but from then on, I always carried a
6" crescent in the tool kit for that purpose.
Roland Dudley
cobra@hpcilan.hp.com
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