9000 starter failure??? Need to diagnose and repair

My 1993 9000CS (non-turbo) just started making a terrible noise upon start-up. The car starts fine, but immediately after starting I hear a gear-grinding type noise for about 1/2 second or so. My initital guess is that the teeth on the starter motor are not disengaging the flywheel teeth fast enough. Has anyone else experience this and is this indicitive of a starter motor failure?? Actually, the starter motor itself is fine but I think that the mechanism (some type of clutch, I guess) that engages/disengages is failing.

Is this clutch part of the starter assembly or can it be replaced seperately?

How do you get to the starter? It seems buried underneath the intake manifold.

Anxiously awaiting responses from all of you Saab experts.

Thanks, Joe

-- Joseph P. Levantino Quality By Design - "One Call Does it All" Complete Home Improvements - carpentry - ceramics - painting

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Reply to
J. Levantino
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Not a clutch mechanism, it's a solenoid. Yes, it is a separate components which bolts onto the side of the starter; and yes, you can replace just the solenoid.

It does sound like the solenoid is not returning fully. Sometimes this happens when they get gunged up, sometimes it just happens.

The bad news is that removing the starter motor is a bitch on a

9000. I hate doing it, and usually end up removing loads of other stuff to get at it comfortably.
Reply to
Grunff

Well I have one that regularly fails to engage, starter just spins.

Go on, depress me as to how much I have to remove...

:)

David.

Reply to
David Taylor

Well, a couple of years ago the starter on my 170k mile 9000 stopped engaging. It turned out to be the ring gear on the flywheel that was worn. I reckon that due to compression timing etc, there are only a limited number (2 or 4??) of places an engine will actually come to rest. Seems the flywheel was only worn at the points of initial engagement.

Got a replacement flywheel from a scrapyard, rather than try to replace the ring gear!

Good luck Julian

Reply to
jmay

Ok, but you won't like it...

I've never managed to do it without removing the inlet manifold!

Reply to
Grunff

That's a very interesting theory however, a retry on the starter switch may well start it with no problems the next time so if the engine hasn't moved, to me that would suggest that it's not the ring gear.

Oh go on, I've always wanted to try heat expanding a ring gear to fit it to a flywheel! :-|

David.

Reply to
David Taylor

Shall I add that to the list of jobs to handle when the head gasket blows then? That and the timing chain all at once!

:)

David.

Reply to
David Taylor

If you're going to do all those at the same time, then why not pull the engine - it'll make your life *much* easier, and you can do a whole load of other things at the same time:

*Front/rear seals *Engine mounts *Clutch + master + slave *4x CV boots

and a few others

As you can see, once you've pulled the engine, many of these turn from being 6 hours jobs to being an extra half an hour.

Reply to
Grunff

True. I'll wait until the head gasket blows before I start thinking about this though. :)

It's all at 138k miles so shouldn't be long...

(Got a new turbo and a new gearbox though)

David.

Reply to
David Taylor

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