[Mike Braddock]

Dennis,

Also, I have an old Lakewood scattershield assembly that has a nut plate welded to the inside of the intermediate plate with two holes--one for the 157 tooth flywheel and one for the larger (as you would have) 164 tooth flywheel. Apparently the previous owner or the engine builder didn't realize that this nut plate actually contact the 'rear' side of the flywheel ring gear (the side closes to the engine). Consequently when I disassembed everything to check the concentricty of the scattershield with the crank centerline, I noticed a LOT of wear on the ring gear. I would check your ring gear with a flash light and see if you have the same problem--it almost looks like someone took a grinder to the rear corner of the ring gear. The solution is to remove the intermediate plate and grind down the nut plate where it is contacting the ring gear as you don't need that part of the nut plate when running the large flywheel. Sounds like you could have a similar problem. The old starter also showed signs of wear caused by the damaged ring gear. Poor design on Lakewood's part, too, as their is plenty of room for the nutplate to have both sets of starter holes and still clear the flywheel. In fairness however, I should note that this scattershield is at least 17 years old, so their newest shields are probably fine, since Bob doesn't appear to have seen this problem and he's done a lot more of them than I have.

Also, my local starter rebuilder gave me a tip. He said if you have engagement problems on these Ford starters, to try a long nose automatic starter bolted up in place of the short nose manual starter to get better engagement between the ring gear and the bendix. I haven't tried it yet, but it could be a cheap solution if none of these other ideas pan out...