The 'E' Type Forum

I?ve spent a couple of hundred hours over the last 3 months addressing a whole load of ?mainly detail ? issues, whilst fitting the JT5 gearbox and bell-housing ; however on the eve of a planned 2.000 km jaunt around the Alps I?m wondering if I?ve not screwed something up ??

I got a Powerlite starter motor from Holdens, and believe it to be the right 3.8 version ? correct pinion tooth-count, same diameter as the original Lucas, I checked the fore-and-aft alignment in the thrown-in position, and the lateral mesh felt fine. The JT bell-housing has eccentric oval steel inserts (fabulous machining) which can be switched to cope with other flywheel/pinion variants, but the position I chose seemed to provide the same geometry as the original bell-housing.

I did crank the motor over before re-fitting the engine/transmission to the car and thought it was noisier than expected, but put this down to it being ?on the bench? and unprotected by any of the usual sound-muffling bonnet and body-work.

However now everything is in place (and finished !) I?m concerned that something is not right. The starter fires the car up instantaneously, but the accompanying whine and clunk is way louder than the original Lucas and doesn?t sound right. Indeed, the engine fires so quickly and cleanly that it also sounds as if it?s then driving the starter motor for a fraction of a second before it is able to disengage. If I had to guess from the noise, I?d say it?s as if the pinion/flywheel tooth engagement is too deep.

What impression did others get from using a Powerlite ? Was it quieter, or is the racket mine makes normal ?

PS Am assuming there are no -ve / +ve earth issues here ? I'm still +ve, the starter spins in the right direction, is that all I need to know ?!

rfs1957 wrote:Indeed, the engine fires so quickly and cleanly that it also sounds as if it?s then driving the starter motor for a fraction of a second before it is able to disengage.

Mine does exactly this on my 4.2. I fiddled about with the switches etc to no avail but so far have resisted the temptation to remove it with the engine in situ. While it annoys me I have now just accepted it; the noise is no different after 3500 miles. The high torque starters do have a loud higher pitched noise than traditional ones hence the name "Highland Park Hummingbird".

rfs1957 wrote:I?m wondering if I?ve not screwed something up ??

Am assuming there are no -ve / +ve earth issues here ? I'm still +ve, the starter spins in the right direction, is that all I need to know ?!

No polarity issues as it's series-wound. Same motor +/ - earth.

I have a high torque starter motor with no such issues - seems suspect to me! Maybe try another vendor?

Vendor ? Normally do all via SNGB who sell the same thing / same reference but were out of stock. Anyway, after 1000+ km over last 5 days and 100+ starts/stops, noise now judged "normal" !!! Think you get better at pushing start-button for a shorter time, once you believe the engine really will start so easily. But probably a good job I added all that sound-proofing ..............

Here are a few shots showing the inserts in the JT5 bell-housing, not sure whether you flip them just R to L or front to back too in some contexts since there are dowelling rebates on the rear faces, must be for other models ?



The fit and finish of the buttons and their recesses has to be felt to be believed - nice work.



I checked the throw by wedging the pinion into the pre-engaged position using window/door plastic shims



which I think I have used more frequently now on vehicles than anywhere on the house - 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 mm thicknesses, each a different colour, a million-and-one uses in the workshop.

Update on this, noise now considerably reduced and acceptable - suspect that the mesh was a tad tight and the teeth just needed to get friendly and burnished together.

It's the age-old problem of adjustability. Once you offer an adjustability upgrade to cope with a range of circumstances, you introduce the potential for sub-optimal settings. This probably reached its apogee when the Japs introduced multi-way adjustable suspension on street bikes. There were numerous butters riding around with all kinds of crazy ride heights, steering castor and damper settings. There are probably some badly shimmed bevel-drive Ducatis too!

Of course in your case you may simply have gone deaf driving thousands of klicks around the Alps, instead of protecting your investment in a bank vault or cardoon. Mad fool :-)

The starter mesh is surprisingly critical. I had the same problem on my wife's Morris Minor convertible - it had a pattern 'laser-cut' adaptor plate between the engine and gearbox, and the holes for the starter were a fraction too far away from the ring gear. It took me a few years of noisy starters and two ring gears to figure this out - I reasoned that the holes in the gearbox were the same so they must be right, but there is just enough slop in there to allow for poor alignment. I ended up grinding some metal off the inside of the hole to enable the starter to get a bit closer to the ring gear, and that helped, but I'm still not conviced it is perfect.