I pulled the motor out of my new-to-me c6 z06 and did new heads, cam, clutch and lightweight flywheel.
It took months for the parts to show up after I had pulled it apart but I finally got the motor back in and together last night.
Oh the joy when it fired up and quieted down after the lifters built up!
On a side note, I noticed little dust fuzzies on the ground as I did a quick cleanup before turning in. I was curious and confused as I had just swept about 30 mins before and had seen none. I disregarded.
so the next morning I went to pull it out. Started great. I noticed more dust bunnies. Curiosity raised but not alarmed.
Went to start again and it was a horrible, terrible gnashing of teeth. I gasped. Like any good mechanic, I figured it was an anomaly and the proper procedure is to try again. Now the starter motor just spun.
Another attempt netted the same result.
The possible causes started swimming around my weary mind. The coincidence of the starter taking a puke right after installing the motor seemed infinitesimal. I tried to convince myself of it but every other scenario had me laboriously pulling this motor again and diagnosing a wasted [expensive] flywheel or worse.
Oh man, I don’t remember torquing the flywheel bolts! Wait, no, I’m pretty sure I did. I even took a pic of how pretty they were.
maybe I didn’t measure the throwout bearing correctly.
They must have messed up the flywheel specs.
Well, nothing was going to get fixed with it there on the ground, so I pushed it back to the lift, disconnected the battery and got it up. I didn’t see anything immediately apparent other than it didn’t look like I would be able to get the starter out without pulling the manifold and downpipe.
The teeth on the flywheel looked good. Which meant I hadn’t destroyed them, and the ring gear hadn’t fallen off. Both had crossed my troubled mind.
I pulled the two bolts for the starter and moved it back a little.
What’s that? Is that the internal stuffing of the starter coming out??
i called my buddy who was on his way to pick up a new starter for me before he was coming over to work on his project that is at my house. I told him to hold off on the starter.
I grabbed a pair of needle-nosed pliers and proceeded to fix my car. It did not require another motor extraction.
It would appear that somehow a sock managed to work its work its way into my starter. We don’t have a mouse problem that I’m aware of and I don’t make a habit of stuffing my clothes into the small spaces of car parts but whatever the reason, I will gladly consider it a sacrifice to the god of easy fixes.
