I’ve slowly realized some traits about myself that are kinda, well, stupid. One of the big ones is that I find I’m far too willing to adapt to certain discomforts and inconveniences instead of actually, you know, solving a problem, and this bites me on the ass. Often a lot of biting. In fact, when it comes to this issue with my ’89 Ford F-150, my ass has been bitten so much it’s like my ass is part of the buffet at some sort of underwater Sizzler that caters to the shark community. And I think I’ve finally realized I just need to fix the damn thing.
The thing I need to fix is a deceptively tiny thing, just five broken teeth on the 164-tooth flywheel. When I think about it, I reason that hey, the flywheel still has 96.9512195% of its teeth! How big a deal can this, be, really? The odds of the starter meshing with the part of the flywheel missing teeth is be a tiny probability, right? How bad could it be?
Well, the truth is that it actually can be pretty bad! Even though it’s just five teeth, I was delusional to think that that means that there would be a tiny chance of the starter ending up away from that small gap of broken teeth, because engines don’t really work that way.
No, it’s not just about where the flywheel will end up in relation to the starter once I shut the engine. Because the engine has to cycle — compression and power and intake, and, yes, exhaust — it has to “spin over” to start, which means those five teeth actually have a fairly high chance of ending up right in line with the starter pinion, with which they cannot and will not mesh. It all depends on where in the cycle everything starts, and if the engine can build enough momentum to fire by the time those five teeth come around. Often times it doesn’t go well.
Really, it seems like this is the case most of the time, because even though I’ll try turning the key in an act of unbridled, unbent optimism, most of the time I’m just greeted with mocking whirring sound as the starter gear spins freely, unbothered by meshing with teeth that turn a whole 300 cubic-inch engine.
So, that means what I have to do is put it in neutral, jam that parking brake down nice and hard and say a little bracha just to be safe, take that big socket wrench I keep in the cab [Ed Note: I donated Jason that wrench partly out of pity. -DT], roll under the truck, get the socket on the crankshaft pulley bolt, and crank the engine over a few times to hopefully get the starter gear in place to mesh with some teeth on the ring gear.
This process, as you can maybe imagine, kind of sucks: if it’s wet – which it has been here a lot lately — you get all moist laying on the ground, it gets my arm all greasy, and often I scrape my knuckles against the fan blades. Then, I roll out, get back in the car, turn the key and hope. I feel like when I started doing this, it would go pretty quick, but lately I feel like I have to roll under the truck and crank that engine three, four, five, or more times before it’ll actually get the starter meshed and turn that engine over.
Why? Why is it like that? Am I not cranking it over enough times? I feel like I am – I can feel the compression of the engine at various cycles, and one time it even kicked back, which hurt. [Ed Note: Jason do not do this with the key in the ignition! -DT].
Anyway, the point is, I’ve been living with it like this for quite a while now. And I have been using the truck for things! I took it to Charlotte for an Ikea run, I helped with a move, I did dirty things to help neighbors, dump runs, all the usual truck stuff. And, for the most part, this is the sort of thing where I can roll under it to turn it on once, and just not turn it off as long as I’m using it.
But sometimes you need to turn a truck off! Sometimes it has to be parked or sometimes it’ll stall just because the universe doesn’t want to make things too easy for you or whatever! And then, that’s when it gets shitty. For example, this past weekend I took a trip down to Wilmington to pick up all those Citroën 2CV parts and I went with a friend, and that makes a difference, because having someone who is not you witness the absurd hassles you put yourself through to, say, start a truck, that delivers some much-needed perspective.
This friend was remarkably patient with it all, but I could tell that the struggles to start the truck were not, um, endearing, let’s say. It happened a few times – a stall as we were just heading off, another starting ordeal after getting gas, and then came the worst one: The Getting Coffee Ordeal.
The Getting Coffee Ordeal
My friend wanted some coffee as we arrived in Wilmington, which seemed fine by me – we even found a drive-thru coffee place just to avoid the hassle of having to park the truck and turn it off. It was a great idea! But holy crap did it go wrong.
Right as I turned into the drive-through lane, the truck stalled. My heart sank as I tried the key and heard the grimly-expected whirr. I grabbed the wrench and rolled under the truck to crank it over, got back in to try the key, and repeated this far too many times, to no avail.
Then the owner of the coffee shop came out to remind me of an obvious, glaring truth: I was blocking her drive through. People were driving by and glaring at me. I was impeding the commerce of a locally-owned coffee shop all because I was too big of an idiot to just fix my damn truck. I went back under. I tried the key. I went under again, key again, under again – no avail. My friend went in to get coffee, came back out to find me still at it. A bit of panic was setting in.
What if my compiled roster of sins and failings had all come due, and this was now my fate? What if I was doomed to do this forever, like Sisyphus and his rock, but instead it’s me, blocking a drive through, desperately trying to start a truck?
Eventually, thankfully, something took pity on me and the teeth meshed and the truck started. I got the hell out of there as quickly as possible, but now the specter of a stall or any hiccup lingered over my head, like a big oily sword of Damocles, waiting to ruin my day. I made it to Stephen’s place, where I did have one more session of below-truck cranking, but then I just left the truck running while I loaded the parts and made it back home, all without turning the truck off once.
I made it back, everything was fine, but I think I finally learned my lesson: sometimes, adaptability is a curse. Yes, I can usually deal with an inconvenience with a car’s operation, I can get used to doing some awkward little trick to make something basic happen, but what we’re willing to tolerate can often snowball, and before you know it you’re on your back cranking an engine by hand, over and over, every time you want to start your truck. And that’s absurd.
This won’t be that big a deal to actually fix. I’m just going to finally do it, and then when the decadent luxury of a truck that starts with a key, like a 1979 Rolls-Fucking-Royce, finally hits me, I’m going to remember that this is simply how it should always have been. I shouldn’t have been willing to accept, for so damn long, something so absurdly sub-par. Why do I do this to myself? And, not just to myself, as I learned what seems like just a little whatever I can deal with soon becomes a big whatever for whomever is unfortunate enough to have to deal with me and this problem.
So, friends, please, take it from me: if there’s an annoying little thing on your car that you’re just sort of working around, take a moment to step back and think about what you may be doing. Even if you’re used to it, and it’s not even something you think about anymore, is it actually a big deal? Ask someone who isn’t you. See what they’re willing to endure. And then maybe rethink things.
Don’t end up like me, friends. I really better fix this stupid thing this time.
Just curious, could you not have put it into neutral and pushed it out of the drive-thru lane?
I know I could shift my ’97 Econoline into neutral without turning the engine on, so long as the battery worked.
For a while, I owned and tooled around in a ’79 VW (air cooled) camper in which the wiring from the ignition back to the starter had degraded so much, it was necessary to crawl under the car (on your back, in front of the rear wheel) to short it with a screwdriver in order to start it. Even if you checked first, there was always a faint worry that it wasn’t actually in neutral, and your ribcage was about to be crushed when the van lurched forward after starting.
It wasn’t that big a deal (I was much younger then) but of course, if it happened to be parked where it was wet or muddy, it was a PITA. Eventually, my buddy ran a scrap of speaker wire up from the starter to a toggle switch we found by the side of the road that he duct taped to the steering column to start it.
He’s a handy guy, my pal Glenn. 🙂
I’m guessing someone already said this, but I suspect that more than 5 teeth are bad at this point. That’s a lot of cycles of the starter trying to engage a half-speed flywheel; even if no more teeth are broken, I’d be surprised if none of them have rounded over a bit.
I have a CJ7 with a SBC and a 120A alternator. I use a battery disconnect from a boat to completely disconnect the 2 batteries when not wheeling it. but ever since I installed the internally excited 1 wire alternator the thing starts, but runs rough until the alternator kicks in. It is not a huge deal, I learn to wait until the idle clears out before use, but it is just one more quirk about an old ride.
When I first had my Olds converted to a 4-speed, we cut and welded linkage rods together to make it work, but didn’t have bushings for the rod that ran to first and second gear. This meant you could move the shifter out of first, but if you weren’t careful, the transmission would still be in first and the only way to get neutral was to crawl under and yank at the greasy, oily, welded-up schmuck of a linkage rod by hand.
I had to do that once in the middle of a busy street, too. I got very deliberate with my shifting and was able to avoid it most of the time after that, and finally the saginaw 4-speed totally broke and I replaced it with a Muncie and new shift linkage. Never again.
When I was in high school, my dad had a Citation. Occasionally, you would turn the key and nothing would happen. Like a dead battery, even though the lights would work fine.
The “fix” was for me to crawl under the car and smack the starter on the bottom of the car with whatever (eventually the ball peen hammer that we needed to keep in the car to hit the starter with), while my dad was cranking the engine. This is made more amusing by the fact that the passenger door didn’t open from the inside, the linkage broke and he wasn’t bothering to rip the door apart to fix it…I’d crank the window down, open the door from the outside, and then wind the window back up.
Looking back, I am now wondering how he handled this when I wasn’t in the car, like when he drove the PoS to work…was he just lucky that it only happened whilst I was in the car??
A high school buddy of mine had an early 1990’s Celica. Every once and a while it would fail to start and he would open the hood and the trunk and perform percussive maintenance on the starter with the tire iron.
Read “Temporary Measures” by Patrick McManus – The danger of a temporary measure becoming a permanent one is what your article reminded me of.
There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix that works
The ghosts of the Challenger agree, even though it isn’t quite the same thing. Graceful Degradation? maybe something like that.
No, that was due to failure of o-rings because of low temps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster
As the ever wise Red Green said during his many duct tape repairs, “This is only temporary. Unless it works”
I had some flywheel teeth start to wear, paired with a bad starter mount and 1 out of 3 attempts the starter would just spin. Started killing the engine by stalling it with the clutch, and it rarely stopped where the flywheel teeth were bad. I too have the habit of adapting rather than fixing, and forget all about the little quirks until I let somebody drive it and don’t tell them the little things they have to do
That 2CV is going to be the most reliable vehicle in your fleet.
And they supplied those with starting cranks! Which is what I think Jason should install on his F-150 as a hilarious way to bypass this starter problem.
I think it is interesting that the problem is the flywheel and not the solenoid. I didn’t need to keep a wrench in the truck. I kept (behind the driver’s headlight) a sprite bottle with gas, a rag, and a straw. Behind the passenger headlight, I had a fancy piece of insulated wire.
The oil pressure gauge worked, though it was a binary output.
The rest did not.
I had a mk3 MR2 that I impulse bought for £1100, and used to skid around in winter and also strap an MTB to when I went to the woods.
It had a sticky hand brake mechanism on the right rear calliper, but as my work and home were flat it was mostly fine. However the road to the shops was a hill, so if I had to stop in traffic and do a hill start I’d get to the shops, wedge the wheels, jack the car up, pop the right rear wheel off, smack the mechanism with a hammer, pop the wheel back on then pop to the shops. Once or twice a week, for months.
I had a stickshift car where the battery would discharge, so I parked it on a hill and it was fine. Then the clutch master cylinder went bad, and I had to bump-start it by abusing the synchros if the battery was flat. Still drove it around like that for a week or two though.
Which would be more effort? Replace the flywheel? Or have a crank start mechanism from an antique tractor installed? I’d go for the crank start for bonus points.
A few years ago the battery lost enough capacity to not be able to start my car. It was a manual, so for a few days I parked facing downhill. With low rolling resistance tires and sometimes some rocking in the seat to gain momentum, pop starting it was doable. A new battery was installed once I had time.
I would have started it like that once and then immediately had it fixed. I have no time for shenanigans like that.
I’m in this story and I don’t like it
Checking receipts…. Didn’t David give you that truck in the first place? Is it really fair of him to feel pity for using a tool that you gave him to half-fix a broken truck that he gave you?
The funny thing is that once the repair is done it will feel amazing to be able to jump in and just start the damn thing with zero BS.
I had my own deferred repair a couple of weeks ago. My ‘94 F150 had a busted taillight lens. It had been that way for months and I am usually really anal about such things but I would never fix it. I kept meaning to order a new one from RockAuto but just could never justify it as I had nothing else to order to combine shipping costs. I finally broke down and grabbed the spare I had on my spare parts shelf and popped it on in 5 minutes. It doesn’t match the newer lens on the other side perfectly but looks a hell of a lot better for no money and 5 minutes of work.
Noticed a small leak in the hard fuel line from the pump to carb on my Crosley – dripping on the exhaust manifold and the generator. Can’t have that! Went to tighten the fitting and found the whole line moving. Actually the whole carb was moving. Actually, the intake and exhaust manifolds are moving because the manifold nuts are loose. To get to those, I have to take off the water pump and generator, plus grind down a wrench to fit in the tight spaces. Then remove five nuts, 1/16 turn at at time. Wa lah! The manholes are loose! Wait.. are there TWO crispy gaskets under the manifolds? And, crap, a tab on the intake manifold is cracked. A week later, I have a new manifold and gasket (because Crosley vendors are surprisingly excellent). Next week I can reverse the whole process… and hopefully fix that fuel leak. Sigh.
I’ve had two issues like this, right now I’m usually bump starting my 09 Civic Si as the starter won’t usually crank it over compression. After a month of these shenanigans and even attending an autocross where I needed to bump start the car many times, I’ve finally broken down and scheduled it to be looked at by a dealer. I never do that.
I’ve also bled air out of the clutch of my Jeep every like 2 days of driving it, I got good at hopping under it and letting fluid drain for 5 seconds before closing the bleeder, refilling the resivior and going on my way. After a year of that I finally pulled the transmission and replaced everything with a full bell housing with an external slave cylinder instead of the dumb internal ones Jeep used in 1990.
I think you may have more than 5 teeth missing.
I don’t know why you haven’t done it yet, it’s such an easy job. Just drop the trans, replace the flywheel, and put the trans back. Oh, may as well replace the clutch and pressure plate too. 20, 30 minutes tops.
I hope you are joking. Last time I dropped the transmission on my truck, it took 4.5 hours of fighting to get the transmission aligned with the pilot bearing ….
Flywheel is one thing that’s a sure fix… but a fuel injected engine just stalling for no reason? That’s more concerning IMO.. Take care of that old gal!
I think I understand why there are so many “less than optimal” vehicles out there. You are going to spend a bunch of time and money to get that truck back to baseline. No enhancements, not making it any “better”, just making it work at the basic level that is expected of a 1989 Ford F-150.
Seems like we are trained to think that our sweat equity is going to make things amazing and new, but in reality you will be so disappointed by how it just “starts” without any fanfare.
I had a friend with a heavily abused Fox body Mustang that he got cheap because it was in terrible shape for the mileage. One of the biggest issues was that (as we found out later trying to fix it up) the flywheel on the non-H.O. 5.0L was missing 3/4 of the teeth, so he would push-start the car by either recruiting his friends to get it moving or strategic parking to let gravity do the work. The T5 also had no reverse gear, so that was another fun one for us to help him with. Good times.
Because, removing the transmission is required