Hi gear starter motor

[Quart Meg Miles]

I suffered frequent failures of the pinions and, eventually, the ring gears when using 9-tooth pinions. Brian Buckland recommends using a 10-tooth in his manual addendum and I did exactly that on my 1971 M35J, with a new ring gear (from Miles Wilkins, I believe), and it has been perfect for 3 years and 8000 miles. With such a small number of teeth there are few actually in engagement and the different spacing doesn't seem to matter.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, you would expect 9 teeth to give higher torque but all I've noticed is that the 10-tooth is quieter suggesting deeper engagement.