Hey losers, I’m back again Our 2011 3.6R with 90k has had a touchy starter for the last couple years - if you don’t stop cranking the engine at the exact right second, it’ll hang up for a second or two and give that ugly grinding sound. How bad is this, is it chewing up the flywheel a bit each time? If it’s worth dealing with, any votes for replacing the starter vs replacing? I’d have to bribe someone with a heated shop, hint hint...
It's possible it's just gummed up a bit. After that long though it might have eaten away the flywheel as well. I actually just replaced a veloster starter saturday (no heat unfortunately) that blew a solenoid from pushing past a ton of road grime too long.
It's pretty rough on the ring gear, and on Subaru automatics, that's built into the torque converter....Yea, I'd fix it. Subaru starters aren't too terrible to replace. I've never had that problem, so I haven't tried fixing it. But Subaru starters are pretty simple, I was cleaning up the brushes in the one in my Forester just this weekend. If I could afford to have the vehicle out of commission for a few days, I'd definitely give a try to pull it apart, look for worn parts, clean and regrease. If you need it back in service, I'd toss an aftermarket reman in there and move on.
Why couldn't a manufacturer make the starter gear out of a slightly softer steel alloy than the ring gear so that when this happens you end up ruining the easy to replace part?
They might, and it helps that there are about 20 times more teeth (and therefore surface area) on the ring gear than the starter gear. It's a pretty rare failure, I don't think I've ever seen one ruined without other circumstances, but at the speed that ring gear moves once the engine is running, it can't be good for either. I wouldn't risk it any longer than absolutely necessary.
Alright, to close this out; after doing some testing of the electrical and current draw during start, I ended up removing and re greasing the starter using the guide below. seems to have done the trick, we'll see how it holds up next winter No damage to the ring gear. Thanks for the advice all. https://legacygt.com/forums/showthr...sassemble-grease-reinstall-w-pics-218329.html
