Wrecked starter ring gear, user abuse?

[Alexander B]

I guess I bought myself a nice lemon of a Renault, and the singular failure to crank during the test drive turned into full blown having to push-start it every time in a matter of days.

Starter ring gear was very toast, pictured is the worst spot, but it was wrecked pretty much all the way around, starter motor also had slightly rounded off teeth.

I spend the last 2 days replacing the flywheel, (and clutch, while I’m in there, it was pretty worn too), and the starter motor. So this is not as much a question about repair, as much as a question as to how it got like this?! Previous owners repeatedly trying to crank it with the engine already running? Sticky starter gear?

And did they replace the starter and then sell it on quickly before that got its teeth eaten too? (I suspect they did that.)

As an aside, man this Renault is so damn complicated to work on compared to my super barebones Citroën. Not to mention I seriously question some of their mechanical design choices. But thats another topic.

Topic

[Stephen Bowen]

Wow. Normally I would think a missing starter shim or something like that. But yes, it’s possible someone continued to key the starter ‘on’ after the engine was running.

With all the new parts installed, just keep an ear out. If the engine starts without any grinding noise and is smooth, I’d say you fixed it.

But good lord’n butter. Who in the world would intentionally crank an engine already started? That adds to a new level of stupid. Unless it was some stupid idiot that knew they where dumping the car anyway and wanted to inflict abuse- Only to find out a running car sells better then a POS that won’t run. So change out the starter and walk away. People like this annoy me.

S-

[Alexander B]

Well, I can imagine people trying to start it while running, its really really quiet, almost but not quite build-a-house-of-cards quiet inside, it ticks over at ~700 rpm idle which barely moves the needle on the tacho. (And my GF did it the first time she drove it..)

The starter has a sticker stating that its a remanifactured unit, but I can’t really tell when it was installed. It did look quite new. Maybe they just remanifactured it wrong and thats what caused it?

There isn’t any kind of shim involved with this setup, so I don’t think it would be that.

Now it starts quietly, so the repair was a succes. I’ll certainly be keeping my ears open for any change in noises though.

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