Alan wrote:
>
> I've been using one of Teds starters for over a year now with no problems.
> Works great for me.
Okay, okay, okay, I give up. I posted the fix I'd come up with, in case
others had the same problem. I wasn't looking to get into a beef with
anyone about suppliers or the starter itself or its reliability. For the
record, I'd written Ted Schumacher first, asking him to pass on my
observations to his supplier about lubrication issues, and he wrote me
back Tuesday, asking me what I thought best, given that I'd made a
reasonably careful examination of the parts and he'd told me then that
he'd contacted the manufacturer's agents about the issue in response to
my email.
I'd mentioned this problem to Ted, months ago, and he said, "send it
back." It wasn't a big enough problem then to bother with it, and I told
him that.
This is not a supplier problem, and, as I said, I'm not dissing anyone.
I've simply said that if this engagement problem appears on a
gear-reduction starter purchased from anyone, here's the likely fix. I
said I wasn't denigrating any supplier, and was simply describing a
problem I'd had and how I'd fixed the problem. And, I repeated that the
starter had been otherwise good and that it had good torque, enough to
start any high-compression engine.
Please, let's differentiate between a complaint about a supplier and a
solution to a problem unrelated to the supplier. I wouldn't have
mentioned this at all, except that before I'd posted the bendix shaft
fix on these, I got a couple of messages from people who said they'd had
similar problems when I mentioned what I'd been doing on my car lately.
I thought I was offering a public service regarding a non-standard part.
So, let's put it to rest. Ted Schumacher has given me good service, and
on more than one occasion, both in person and by email, he told me to
return the part. I was too lazy at the time to pull the starter and do
so. Having found recently at least one failure mode of the starter, I
tried to help others fix the same problem. That's it. That's all. I have
found myself in the 2% of people with a troublesome starter.
My email was not intended to invite dissenting comment from people who'd
had no trouble. It was meant to provide repair information to those
people who did have a similar problem. This list has become so used to
supplier complaints that some of its members generally assume that every
mention of a problem relates to a supplier deficiency. Not true.
Everyone who's said now, "my starter is great" will, a few years from
now, be saying, "my gear-reduction starter spins up but doesn't engage.
What do I do?" My advice is, years from now, "look at the archives."
What I'm saying now will be of help years from now. That's the point.
It's not my point to give a supplier a hard time when they didn't
manufacture the part they sold and don't have a high failure rate for
that part. I'm just passing on what I've found for benefit of the
general body of knowledge. Okay?
Thanks.
--
Michael D. Porter
Roswell, NM (yes, _that_ Roswell)
[mailto:mporter@zianet.com]
The gulf between content and substance continues to widen....
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