What gives Mopar starters their sound ?

"I friend"? Neither you nor your friend do very good impressions.

 

I don't know exactly when, but MoPar engineered the so-called high-speed starter to spin their engines over faster, to take it easier on the battery. Some time between '56 when they went to 12-V and early '60s. Don't know the year, but they do sound different.

 

I remember my dad's old 50 Chevy 216 starting.
It always had the original 6 volt system and it sometimes would sound like it wasn't going turn over fast enough to start.
Dad told me once that he'd come out of work at 1 AM in the winter, snow on the ground, well below freezing and the old truck would start when some of the newer cars the other "boys" had wouldn't.
One of my uncles was a MOPAR guy...still is actually.

 

Better engineering means designing the part to do the job at least cost. I'd say GM had better engineering....Mopar stuff was too complicated. Those old mopar gear reduction starters are a bitch to work on. Even getting out of the car is a pain.

 

Heres a demo of the Mopar starter sound from my Dart a few minutes ago .So much for Mopars being hard to start in crappy weather.Been sitting since yesterday morning and its raining and in the 30's here .Started and ran on the second try with no choke .Gotta love the rewards of a properly tuned Demon carb and MSD ignition on a healthy Mopar .Froze my ass of in my house shoes ,but worth it to clear up the "NO ,NO ,NO ,no ,no, no, .........click " misconception ...

 

I remember guys back in the day coming in the parts house wanting Mopar starters that didn't have that sound. peace

 

My MOPAR buds favorite saying was that a MOPAR starter had more torque than a small block chevy.

 

Don't blame your getting older on a starter-design Jim...

Also, I don't think Moefuzz didn't finish his sentence here.

When Mopar switched to an full aluminium transmission body in 1962 they introduced their gear-reduction starter which produced 1.5 HP. Later on they made a 1.8 HP version.

 

Geea Geea GE veroom

 

All you bowtie boys that think Chevy was better engineered and way far ahead of Chrysler had better take a long hard look because Chrysler had way more innovations on their cars years before Chevy or Ford!

 

I remember someone referring to the sound as a "Katherine Hepburn cackling starter". I still find that funny.

 

whut? you do realise Mopar suspensions are a clusterf**k compared to GM or Ford...

 

Your not refering to torsion bars are you ? The best factory weight transfering drag frontend back in the early 60's ...

 

mopar starters are sweet, too bad the doors fall off every car they ever made, they shoulda spent money on doors and jambs.....lol......i put a gear reduction starter on my chevy, but its a pain in the a#$ to fix all them dodge doors......

 

If you realy want to see sum fallen off doors they came on GM cars in the late 60's through the mid 80's ...

 

My present project is a '66 chevy II with a small-journal 327, I also own a 428 FE powered falcon, I have had sbf's, BB and SB mopars(still do), and have built all of the above as well as sb and BB chevies(some SERIOUSLY nasty ones). The engineering, metallurgy & factory machining on the Mopar stuff is way better. WAY better. Thats just the way it is. Honestly, to argue the point pretty much just illustrates ignorance of the mopar stuff. Fit finish and paint, yes, the chevy stuff was better. Engineering? Your dreaming...Pretty much EVERY sixties Mopar engine has a steel crank, thick cylinder walls, long rods, deep main skirts wider main webs, shaft-mount rockers ect, ect ect. The oil pump drives are better engineered, the rods are stronger, the cranks are beefier, everywhere you look in those motors, the engineering is better than the Ford & GM stuff. Its just a stone fact. Christ, half the Ford stuff has broach-cut rods! If THAT doesnt scare you, your clueless.

 

i`ve worked on both, and mopars are the worst........chevys only kill the pins, dodges the whole door breaks and the jam....like i was tellin my friend the other day that bought a new dodge diesel truck, if he took that motor, put it in a ford body, with the chevy tranny, it would be a sweet as truck.......lol.....they all got problems......

 

See the recurring themem here? All the Chevy guys relate things to how often they have to be repaired or replaced.
Guess what? I have NEVER had to replace a Mopar starter, or distributor. When I worked in a shop bak in the day, it was always a PITA to have to explain to a chevy owner why, when he brought his car in for a simple tune up, he needed a distributor rebuild because of the sorry cheap engineering of it. Same with starters. I never heard of shimming a starter until I dropped a 350 in my little LUV pickup. What crap. When I was in the Air Force, every Chevy they bought with a V8 came with a glovebox full of spare rocker arms because the POS's would chuck them off their stupid studs. Mopars, of course, run a shaft. I could go on, with things like forged axles compared to cast axles, etc.
And Shocker is right, torsion bars are the best suspension there was back then, and if you ever read about the One Lap of America race, you'll find a little '68 Plymouth Valient kicking snot out of John Sitleow's high dollar pro touring Camaro, and every other car except the mid engined Counselor. BTW, it also runs Mopar factory taxicab drum brakes, and beats the pants off these cars on road courses!

 

You guys crack me up .Its always exciting to watch the GM vrs Mopar vrs Ford thing .Truth is i am a fan of all old cars and have owned, worked on, and raced all three .I was raised on Chevys like most people (as my dad was a Chevy die hard) ,but im more open minded than most when it comes to cars .I was just curious about the starter sound was all .Just goes to show this rivalry will never end ...

 

yeah, there are some diehards out there, i love and own em all too, all have they`re goods and bads......i wasn`t trying to start a war either......but the diehards will defend there stuff to the end i guess........glad i didn`t mention that didge isn`t even american anymore.......lol.....oops......they can hotrod fiats pretty soon....yikes......merry christmas too all........love you guys....

 

Mopars rule .. close thread

 

Yep....gear reduction starters are great!......until they lock up on the ring gear, and the dipshit owner drives it to the dealership.

The mech brought it into the parts dept., and shook internal parts out onto the counter. That thing just grenaded inside during it's ride to the dealer.

That was back in the 80's when I worked parts for a local dealership. We had a batch of them do that one winter.

Roger

 

Mopar ceased to exist in 1978 when Iacocca took over, and thats not nostalgia, its a fact. Anything that happened after that is nothing to do with Mother Mopar, it was reborn as a new and entirely different entity, and any efforts to take the lead in terms of engineering had long since ended. Look at the cars I own, I am far from being a Mopar die-hard. The superiority of Mopar engineering as compared to Chevy and Ford in the late fifties into the sixties is a fact. In the late sixties the fit and finish could be pretty tacky, no arguments there. Engineering? Just the way it is.

And I have never had a mopar starter lock on the ring gear. I HAVE had to shim dozens of chevy starters just to get the motor to fire. Also broken starter noses off on high compression BB chevies with the curve locked out. Actually had to pull a starter out of the truck and swap it into the race car at one point, just to answer the call to the lanes. But honestly, these individual cases dont prove anything. All you really have to do is build a few motors from each of the big three, and it becomes obvious who used the best materials and had the best engineering.

 

yep I love that song been listening to it as long as I can remember, I had a hard time finding the album again. I love the entire album.

 

the real good one is how a thread on why mopar starters sounds the way they do turns into a because mopar had better engineering fiasco..........heres the short answer then the thread can close..........gear reduction starter........extra part in the starter to break.....lol

 

Mopar torsion bar suspensions are a piece of cake to work on, and far simpler and safer, than any GM or Ford front suspension. I'll take the ease and adjustability of a Chrysler torsion bar suspension over the coil-sprung nonsense of GM, or the giant intruding shock towers that make doing stuff on a Ford a serious PITA!

And, yes, Chrysler was indeed far ahead in overall engineering over GM and Ford, without a doubt. Torsion bar suspensions...First to use an alternator...WAY ahead of Ford and GM with the use of unibody construction (yeah, Nash and Hudson were further ahead yet!)...first to offer electronic ignition as standard equipment...I can go on all day, if you'd like!

Since 1972, I've owned close to 700 cars and trucks of nearly ALL makes, so I'm pretty well-versed in what works and what doesn't.

 

Agreed! It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the much larger diameter of the Mopar distributor/oil pump drive gear is going to result in less side loading of the bearings than that on a Chevy. Not to mention that on a Mopar this drive gear is on an intermediate shaft with it's own bearing. There is no side loading at all on the Mopar distributor shaft.

 

yeah, thats why they mopar starters sound like that, cause they got a better distributor gear......lol

 

The question was "What gives Mopar starters their sound?"...

God. He drives a Mopar.

 

Yep, the first one I ever rebuilt I thought I was never going to be able to get it back together. I can redo one of my old GM starters for about five bucks in less than 30 minutes but wouldn't touch the one in my Dodge van for love nor money.