After about three months of hearing my starter screech violently on startup every morning, I decided to regrease my starter according to the directions on Motorvate.ca.

Being somewhat unsure of my ability to take the thing apart and put it back together, I purchased a starter from Kragen just in case my "repair" turned out to have an opposite result.

Taking the intake ducts out and the tubing to the throttle body was easy, as was removing the battery. There is a battery cable which obstructs the connector for the starter solenoid, and I had no idea how to remove the black plastic clip that held the battery cable to this metal bracket just above it, so after 30 minutes of pushing and pulling with a screwdriver, I just took a pair of wirecutters and snapped the black clip off (i.e. I broke it off). After that, it was easy to unclip the starter cable.

The rear bolt (the long one) on the starter was torqued on there really tight. The specs say 70lb/ft, but on my car it was more than that. Took a good knock with a mallet on a long breaker bar to loosen the rear bolt. The starter came out fine.

Opening up the starter was easy, as was regreasing it. I cleaned the old grease (or lack of it...most of it turned into black dust) out with WD-40, regreased, and reassembled. It looked better than new. Then I noticed the FSM says to grease the white plastic fork from the solenoid. So I opened it back up again, and greased that. So far so good. I was torquing down the last starter case bolt to 35lb/ft when I heard a "tink" sound. I thought it was my torque wrench clicking to tell me the torque had been reached. It wasn't...rather the bolt snapped in half. Three hours of work down the drain. I know I could have probably drilled the broken end of the bolt out and gotten a new bolt, but it would have driven me crazy looking for a long bolt like that at the local Kragen. So I just installed the new starter...good thing I had the backup! Oh well at least I know how to open up and rebuild a starter now.

So..for those of your planning to regrease your starters, it's not that hard. Should take no more than four hours, since even a dolt like me did it in three hours. But don't overtorque those bolts! Actually, I think the bolt was defective snapping at 35lb/ft, since the other one torqued down to 42lb/ft (spec) just fine. You can also clean out your throttle body while the air duct is off. Mine was pretty clean already, since I cleaned it around 10,000 miles ago.

 

if it makes you feel any better i break something everytime i work on a car. thanks for the heads up though now i know to control my massive strength on a starter bolt.

 

The bolt that broke, was it one of the copper ones? I know I broke mine too. There's no way you'll get that sucker to 35lbs.

 

Yeah it was one of the copper ones. The FSM says to torque down to 35lbs. I think socket wrench tight is sufficient.

 

good post.

just curious, did you open up the kragen starter to see if it was sufficiently/properly lubed prior to installing it?

 

The Kragen starter said if you open it, the lifetime warranty is voided. I figure if it starts making noise, I will just exchange it for another one.

 

" ...I was torquing down the last starter case bolt to 35lb/ft when I heard a "tink" sound. I thought it was my torque wrench clicking to tell me the torque had been reached. It wasn't...rather the bolt snapped in half. "

If you snapped the bolt in half how did you take out the half in the engine?

 

I did not break the bolts that mount the starter to the engine. I broke one of the copper bolts which holds the starter unit together.

 

sometimes you have to use you hand as your torque wrench. I've snapped many a bolt using FSM specs. It doesn't take into account metal fatigue and bolt stretch. If I'm trying to torque a bolt to fact spec and the bolt starts to feel a little funny like its streching, thats where I stop, factory torque or not.