Vg30e starter/flywheel grinding

[Mintbagel]

Ok this is a bit of a story I'll start from the beginning.
I was on deployment and my wife was driving our '89 300zx n/a a/t and the starter went out. A buddy came over and replaced it with a new one from pep boys, 2 days later it went out again. Got another replacement and put it in. This starter just made a large grinding noise when you tried to turn it over. Buddy said it was probably the flywheel and so it say for 5 months until I got home. I took a look at it and sure enough the teeth on starter and on flywheel where ground down as if they stripped and were catching, so got a third starter and ordered a new flywheel, fast forward 2 months of me being lazy and putting off changing the flywheel and finally it is replaced, go to start it up and it makes a terrible grinding noise but then starts right up, tried about 8 times to make sure I could isolate the sound and where it's coming from, the took the starter back off and can see that both have started to grind down just ever so slightly... So now what the hell would cause this?!?!?!?

Thank you in advance

[[email protected]]

Show us pictures? the grinding pattern and evenness will say a lot...

[Mintbagel]

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These are the best pictures I could get of the wear pattern, if you need more let me know and I'll go take them... And this is the old flywheel and newest starter by the way. I'll also take pictures of the new flywheel that is installed after work tomorrow


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[Dboyizmlg]

When you start the car, is the starter staying engaged for a few seconds causing the grind noise?

[[email protected]]

Looking at the damage, it seems like your starter is radially too close to the flywheel, I don't know how that's possible, but that's what I'm seeing, you see the damage extends below the valleys of the flywheel teeth...

Do you have the steel sandwich plates between the engine and trans? Maybe something isn't sitting flat and they are tilting towards each other unnaturally ?

[Mintbagel]

I have all the plates, everything seemed installed correctly, I will remove them and try seating them again, and I forgot to mention the grinding does seem to only happen right before the engine turns over...


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[Mintbagel]

I went ahead and checked the bracket and it is installed correctly and put the starter back in this time to exact torque specs (5ft/lbs according to the Haynes manual) and it sounds maybe even worse... But I took more pictures68579 old flywheel68580old flywheel68581new starter68582new starter68583mounting bracket68584new flywheel68585new flywheel


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[Mintbagel]

On a suggestion I tried putting a washer between the starter and the bracket, still didn't work... Please someone save me!!!!


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[Mintbagel]

Just so you guys know I actually just got 3 bad starters, got a new one and it works great now


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[[email protected]]

The z31 starter is one of the most durable I've ever seen, whenever I've needed one, I just got another used one...this is one of those cases where rebuilds are never as good as the original

Sucks that it took 3; that would have been my next suggestion, but people would have had trouble accepting that idea :\

[Mintbagel]

Well I've had stuff like that happen before so that's why I went with it...


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