This is just a general small block chevy question. They said you're supposed to have 1/8th" clearance between the teeth of the flexplate and the starter shaft. Is this right? I have just a BIT more than that right now, and the damn starter gear keeps getting stuck on the flexplate. Is it supposed to be 1/8th" clearance between the top of the starter GEAR and the top of the flexplate TEETH. This is starting to bug me. Thanks guys!
:cheers:

 

Hi Tim,

I have the same year and model you do. When I first bought my car (used of course) I noticed the starter was loud. It didn't make a bad noise, just a louder noise than a normal start makes, I thought. So I took it into a Chevy dealer and had it inspected. They said there was nothing wrong with it. That's all they said. They didn't say in particular that the starter made more noise than normal.

So I jacked the car up myself and took off the inspection plate and looked at the teeth on the flywheel. I couldn't see up to where the starter gear engaged the flywheel but the teeth looked normal to me. Not much wear at all for 112,000 miles.

Other Chevy people said that it was loud and that maybe the starter gear is too close to the flywheel. There's no spacers at all between the starter and the housing. I've never seen a Chevy that did have any spacers there. It's been that way for 3 years now. So I don't know. Do you have any spacers between the starter and the bell housing? BTW, I think the specifications call for an 1/8" "play" between the starter and flexplate teeth, meaning the starter gear will move that much before before hitting the teeth on the other side. At least that's the way I always interpreted the specs.

It seems to me that those two gear teeth must be severely worn to let one tooth hang on top of another one. Especially if you have no spacers. If you do have spacers, remove them and see how it works. Your prob should be solved then. If you have no spacers, things should be really worn and you probably would have mentioned that in your post. The only way you'd know for sure that one tooth is hanging up on top of the other tooth is to take the inspection plate off when this happens and check it out. You would have seen the excessive wear then I'm sure.

This forum is an invaluable source for Corvette info as you know (judging by your 4500+ posts). The people who hang here are the best. But sometimes communicating directly with someone who has the same car you do can be just as invaluable. I have done a lot of work on my car, mostly myself as money's tight. I have attempted and done a lot of things most Corvette owners wouldn't have done. They'd either just replace the parts or forget about it if it wasn't critical. I have quite a few tips, tricks and pictures of repairing cracked leather seats to how to fix those plastic interior parts with missing corners or spider cracks around the holes. Feel free to contact me if I can help. bigjim@bigjimracing.com. I don't sell Corvette parts so this isn't a come-on to a sales pitch. Just trying to help a fellow '87 Z-52 owner. This goes for any other owners of same.

Good Luck,
BIG JIM


[Modified by BIG JIM 54, 12:58 AM 6/24/2003]

 

Sorry to not specify, but this is on my 75 chevy truck, not my vette. (Just thought I'd post here, because a SBC is a SBC)
:cheers: