What would cause a starter to just spin and not engage with the flywheel when you turn the key. Battery is fully charged .Was working fine .Car got warm (only 210 or so) and did this .Still just spinning on same with cold motor. .Starter is very new with maybe 13 starts .Tuff Stuff starter number 3131B on a 390 motor. Volt meter shows 13.5-14 volts when it was just running before acting up.
I had one (just purchased re-man) that the slug in the solenoid was so tight in the bore that it wouldn't kick the drive out. Gary
From what I can see from the drawing, you should check the starter, the solenoid, and the neutral safety switch. The starter being new is the variable so I would begin there, check wiring/voltage where necessary
Those FE starters dont have a “traditional” solenoid. Under the big cover is a lever that’s operated by the field of the starter itself. I’d guess either the gear is jammed or it’s fallen off. As it’s turning everything is probably ok electrically so you’re going to have to crawl underneath and try not to drop a 20lb lump of metal on your head!
Should be three. One on the back side is a ***** to get to. I always put three in but a lot of people only installed two.
There shouldn't be anything sketchy about that starter, it is just a private manufacture Ford starter. The magnetic field in the starter has to pull down the lever that pushes the starter drive out to engage it with the ring gear, uncovered in photo 2. It's most going to be one of two things. 1. Something in that lever and drive setup is hanging up and not letting it work right. 2. you aren't getting the amps to the starter to create a powerful enough magnetic field to pull the arm/lever down every time. First check every connection on both battery cables. At the battery, at both of the solenoid, and at the starter, Then at the battery and make damned sure you have a good clean BARE ground connection. The starter also needs a good clean bare ground connection where it bolts to the bellhousing or plate. If you just painted the block and transmisson all that pretty paint might be acting as insulation.
I always and did here ,run my battery ground directly to a starter mounting bolt. Very fresh build with no paint in critical areas. It was working fine when engine was cold but this was the first time ( again fresh build) that I tried to start it after a good drive…that did reach 210 degrees. Also the voltmeter was showing 13.5 to 14 volts during that drive. I am thinking that heat had something to do with it?
Mr Chev covered most of this, but I'll throw one more thing out there... do you have the right starter? Ford used two different starters on the FEs; a long-nose version from '58-64, and the short nose like you have from '65-76. If your bellhousing has a 'tunnel' for the long shaft early starter, then the question is which flywheel/flex plate do you have? The early starter uses a 153 tooth ring gear, the later one 184. Plus the gear pitch is different. So while the later starter will bolt-in in place of the early starter, the gear mesh is such that they try to eat each other. Hopefully that's not what happened here. If there's no teeth missing off the 153T gear, the easy fix is this: Easy Fix to Avoid 1958-1964 Big-Block Ford Starter Failure. If the ring gear is damaged with teeth missing, you'll need to replace it. For a manual trans, you can replace just the ring gear with the newer one (about $20) by heating them to remove/reinstall. If you have an automatic, you'll need a newer flexplate with the right tooth count. One last thing. The way these work is this. When the starter is initially engaged, the inrush current pulls the field pole down, engaging the starter gear. Once engaged, the high load current keeps it engaged until the motor catches, the current then drops off and the gear disengages. If the gear fails to engage, the no-load current isn't enough to keep the gear engaged and it releases. If you loosen the dust shield on the brush end of the starter then remove the field pole cover, you can see what it's doing in place. I don't see the high temp doing any harm.
Well, I honestly didn't know that there were two lengths of starter snouts on Ford FE set ups. My Ford knowledge pretty well ends with Y blocks but my how a starter works knowledge covers more bases. Some researching shows that there seems to be no exact defined year break on what style of starter was used on what when searching for a year break. I did get on the Tuff Stuff starter site and they do have their what it fits list FE Starter #3131B - TUFF STUFF Performance Accessories Checking Rock Auto shows the earler FE engines still used the old style starter drive up through 64 at least and in 64 it looks to be the change over year to the starter in question.
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