starter?

ok its a 92 camry with 147k miles and when you try to start it sometimes it does the loud grinding sound, is it the starter or something else? thanks

It can be either/or or both the starter drive gear and/or several teeth broken off the flywheel. You will have to remove the starter and examine it and also turn the engine by hand and observe all the teeth on the flywheel. Make some kind of mark so you can see when the flywheel has been turned a full 360 degrees. If teeth are missing on the flywheel it becomes an expensvie fix.

Good luck.

Mike

how do you turn the engine by hand

Remove the passanger wheel, remove the access panel cover (2*10mm bolts)
19mm crankshaft bolt rotates the engine. Try to only rotate it in the correct direction, to keep the bolt from loosening. (clockwise) Don't keep cranking if it grinds. You'll eat the teeth away. Most of the time, a single tooth at a time has been partly ground off.


If you do a quick tap with the key, you'll normally knick the broken tooth enough to grab good teeth. Then you can crank normally.


Anyway, sounds like you've broken some teeth off. Nothing personal, but that's normally caused by owners that hold the key in the start position than longer than they should. ;)

A stronger statement: Make sure you only rotate the engine clockwise.

The timing belt and cams were only made to rotate in one direction. Even at 1 rpm, the cams are under a significant load.

It's very possible that the flywheel teeth is damaged. I remember that some Camrys have this kind of problem that the angle of the teeth is not good so the engagement is not sufficient.

Take off the starter and check the teeth on the flywheel together with the ones on the starter pinion. Flywheel is not that expensive but it's not easy to replace it.

The bright side is that you may only need to remove the starter and clean the plunger (replace the solenoid contacts while you're in there) and reinstall the starter. If the plunger is sticking, it may not engage totally and cause this effect. As long as this hasn't been going on too long, nothing may be damaged.

http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=166530

well its probally been a while and my mom bought it like this for $2000 (believe it or not its her first car) but im trying to fix all the little things but this is my biggest problem, ive never taken a flywheel off but ill try the starter

This has some good info about your cars starter etc...

http://www.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d/80/13/e2/1e/0900823d8013e21e.jsp