Diagnosis Game

Cool. That just what I am going to do. I hope it cures the problem.

I am going to have to un bolt the starter to lube it.
We shall see. thanks for the tip.

Sd

I found out what the starter problem was. It wasn't electrical, or a rusted starter.

It turns out that on the back of the fly wheel is an aluminus disk called a flex plate.
over the years the aluminum bolted to the steel fly wheel (Dissimilar metals)
coroded. Pieces of the aluminum plate had broken off. A chunk of this had managed to somehow lodge in the nose cone of the starter. The aluminum chunk would wedge and prevent the gear from engaging the flywheel.
When this happened I would use a screw driver to arc the positive and negetave contacts on the back of the starter solinoid.
This would generally force the Aluminus shard to dislodge and allow the starter to function, untill the next time it became wedged again.
That was why sometimes the starter would work and sometimes not.

The only way you can see this componet is to remove the starter and look at the back of the flywheel thru the aperature where the starter nose piece enters the transmission housing. You will see bolted to the flywheel this metal flex plate.

Now I am going to have to pull the transmissin to replace this part.

Those of you with 3208 n.a.'s may benifit from my discovery.
I hope this doesn't happen to you.


I appologize for sort of steeling this thread but it was a bit of diagnosis to solve a quite troubling problem I have been having. And a Eurika moment when I finally figured out what the problem really was.
Sd

psneeld said:

did I miss it? why did the engine stall in the first place?????

Click to expand...

Engine stalled because the bleed not on the engine mounted FF was loose, there was a little air in the lines, I guess.

Dougcole said:

Engine stalled because the bleed not on the engine mounted FF was loose, there was a little air in the lines, I guess.

Click to expand...

if not sure..then everything else is a guess too...but the rest and the air leak seems pretty reasonable.

Remember, I wasn't there, it was the delivery skipper that stalled the boat and my brother's mechanic who found the loose bleed screw. But I haven't had that problem since, and I've put about 200 hours on the engine since then, so it is a pretty safe bet that is what it was.

true...all I was getting at is that one had no relation to the other...the engine in gear (no start) and the engine stalling.

a huge issue in teaching people to fix things is "just because it works now doesn't mean it's fixed"...till you know why it stopped working and fixed THAT...everything else you do is just a guess.

but I will admit in your case and often in other unusual situations where there are multiple issues...they can be real head scratchers and sometimes the real issue isn't identified till later.