[TR] Gear Reduction Starter

[Randall]

> When I 
> turn the key and push the button, power complete drains the 
> system and even the electric fuel pump stops running.

I'd consider that good evidence that the problem is outside of the starter.  A healthy battery should be able to deliver several
volts even into a dead short at the starter.  Bad ground strap or (most common in my experience) a poor connection between clamp and
battery post.  With the starter trying to draw literally hundreds of amps, it doesn't take much at all for that joint to get hot and
refuse to connect.

> 
> Question.  I had sort of thought that these new gear 
> reduction starters would be more reliable than the old stock 
> starters.  Has there been any experience out there otherwise?

Yup.  The gear reduction starter that I installed in 2001 has been fairly troublesome for the past couple of years now.  It started
cranking slower and slower; then intermittently refusing to crank at all.  When I pulled it off and apart, I found that the ball
bearings carrying the armature were ruined (as in the round balls were now cubes).  Kind of looks like the heat from the exhaust
cooked all the grease out of them, and allowed rust to form.  The slow cranking was because the ruined bearings were allowing the
armature to rub against the pole pieces.  I also found that the contacts inside the solenoid looked burned and weren't very well
aligned with each other.  

The intermittent aspect was apparently because the quick connect to the solenoid had worked loose slightly.  Not enough to pull off,
but I could feel a tiny bit of play in it.

I cleaned all that up and reinstalled it (with a simple heat shield) last year.  Then I didn't drive the car from August until this
week (after some idiot backed into me at a stop light).  Now in the past few days, the drive has started occasionally refusing to
engage with the flywheel.  Might just be dirty (there is body shop dust everywhere), but if it doesn't start working better soon,
I'm going to have to pull it again.  I may just go back to an original later style starter (since I now have a later style flywheel
* gearbox).  Within its limitations, it was a pretty reliable piece.  The original (as far as I know) early style starter on
TS39781LO lasted some 40 years and who knows how many 100,000 miles (with occasional bushing and brush replacements, of course).

Randall