Rick's Free Auto Repair Advice

Starter grinding noise when cranking the engine

How to fix a grinding noise when starting the engine

If you hear a metal-to-metal starter grinding noise when trying to start your engine, chances are you’ve got missing teeth on the flywheel or broken/worn teeth on the starter motor drive gear. This damage happens if you try to start an already running engine.

Trying to start an already running engine forces the starter drive gear into the spinning teeth of the flywheel, which is turning much faster than the starter motor. As the starter drive gear touches the flywheel, the teeth clash and some flywheel teeth break off, chip or wear. Here’s what the grinding sounds like:

However, before you rip into this, starters can’t make other noises that are not as serious as a damaged flywheel. Listen to the sounds in this post to see if your sound matches those

Confirm the problem

Remove the starter and examine the teeth on the ring gear of the flywheel. If the teeth are chewed up like shown in the image below, you’ll have to replace the flywheel. This is an expensive fix because the transmission has to be removed in order to remove the old flywheel.

Broken, worn and missing flywheel teeth

broken missing flywheel teeth


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Posted on by Rick Muscoplat

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