Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Andrew,

Should your starter require more than a new Bendix drive, the Flackmaster, who visits here frequently, was selling an Auto Lite starter for your car at Salado last year. It will require an overhaul, but it is all there. I almost bought it, but passed on the opportunity.

(o[]o)

Pulled the starter. This is what I found:

Here's why the engine wouldn't start when I attempted to push start it.

I'm thankful that the flywheel isn't destroyed. As it is, it only had a few chewed up teeth. I took a picture of the worst area. I'm not too happy about the flywheel damage, but there's nothing I can do about that. I don't think it's enough to cause any problems. Any thoughts?

I'm happy though to see that the horrific noise I heard wasn't a catastrophic failure of my engine!

Looks like I need to find out if that starter is still available. I'll look to see if I can't send Flaskmaster a PM.

What could have caused this to happen? Combo of the starter getting stuck engaged along with the engine firing up with me giving it extra gas when it finally caught in order to keep it from dying out immediately?

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Well, you can disregard everything I said. That's not the same type starter I have on my 356's.

Wow! You're not running 12v are you. Thought that kind of damage only happened to that combination. Is that the correct starter for a 356? I thought those all used the reduction gear type such as JD mentioned.

Here's a spark plug that I pulled with the .050 gap. This is pretty indicitive of all of them. Champion J11C.

And here is the wiring going to the starter after I removed all the loose fabric insulation and electrical tape that was just hanging off them.

I should have known better than to operate the car with these issues. For now, I'll tape up the exposed wiring until I can get a new complete harness and I sourced new, modern Autolight plugs, part #3136 that are still produced for the old applications. they are direct replacements for the old 10mm AC M8 / Autolight P6 plugs.

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Wow! You're not running 12v are you. Thought that kind of damage only happened to that combination. Is that the correct starter for a 356? I thought those all used the reduction gear type such as JD mentioned.

No sir... 6V on a battery that I was afraid was going to die.

I really don't know if it's the correct starter. I'll pull the numbers off of it and check. Now that I'm looking into this car more, nothing would surprise me.

Did any of the starter bolts appear loose? I wonder if there was any play there and the flywheel clipped the snout on the starter and broke it.

Seems like we have had a rash of these starters breaking lately in the same place. I also have seen several "rewelded" starters at the swap meets that broke in the exact same place over the years.

Bad castings? Starter bolts loose?

Are these all the same make and model of starter? Just curious.

The tag on the starter: Delco Remy 1108015 2L20

I do have a Delco Remy distributor as well. My '47 has a delivery date of Feb 1948 if that means anything. It also has a S/N that starts with 2150, not 2151, even though it's a limousine with the partition window and jump seats, not just the jump seats.

So who knows?

Time to find a correct replacement starter.

I could be all wrong, but according to the parts book and the three 356's I work with, your car should have an Autolite MAX 4052 which is the starter I was blathering on about. The 4052 is quite a different animal. For starters (pun intended), it doesn't have a 'Bendix Gear'.




Autolite MAX 4052 with the relay and plunger mechanism covers removed.

Edit: corrected Autolite number due to my finger slipping on the parts book.

Did any of the starter bolts appear loose?

No sir, it was up there nice and tight.

Maybe the castings were just okay and now that these starters are 65 years old, the metal has fatigued to the point where they are now failing.