Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hi torque Starter on elan and worked perfect before engine rebuild. It engages and turns over/starts engine, however when engine fires I often get a loud mechanical clashing noise.
Has anyone experienced this before?
Flywheel ring gear and starter gear seems fine. It seems like the bendix is not retracing fast enough.
Any ideas

When you say it worked perfectly before rebuild do you mean it worked perfectly before the engine was rebuilt or perfectly before the starter itself was rebuilt?

Engine rebuild …. Nothing done to starter motor
If spark plugs are out it engages and disengages fine. Only when the whe spark plugs are in and engine fires, do I sometime he a mechanical crunching sound

My high-torque starter often makes the clashing noise I think you refer to. I took it out and spent a fair amount of time making sure it was aligned properly, but it made no difference.
After some 40k miles I recently pulled the engine for various maintenance, and both the gear on the starter and the ring gear look just about perfect.
I am assuming the noise is just a characteristic of this type of starter.

If it's a pmgr starter, check this thread.
https://classicbroncos.com/forums/threa ... ed.238370/

Certainly sounds like the same issue on the Bronco forum. I’ll give it a try and report back.
Thanks

That's a really interesting problem.

I was going to point out that the Bronco forum is nonsense, because PMGR starters usually have a one-way clutch so that when the engine fires, the engine doesn't drive the starter - but of course its the residual rotational energy in the starter's rotor that keeps it spinning and generating. You ought to be able to recreate this effect on the bench and see the delay in the pinion retracting.

If this is the problem, the fix is easy, just run the 'starter' connection from the ignition switch to the solonoid on the starter, as well as to the original starter relay on the firewall. This will take the solonoid out of circuit when you release the ignition key.

As a complete aside, it was testing the 'spin down' rotational energy in the rotors of the Chernobyl generators that lead to the disaster.

Well, it wasn’t the short jumper from solenoid to the power on the motor. Ran ignition (start signal) from the standard bulkhead solenoid on Hi Torque Starter motor. Same problem.
I think I need to remove it and have it checked out by a professional. It tested fine when I tested last week.
Thanks