Quote:
Originally Posted by aureliusmax
Could be a worn out ring gear, and that would match your symptoms. And that's a bad time. Remove your starter, spin the engine with a bar on the crank pulley and inspect the flywheel teeth. If they're good, replace the starter.
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I don't know what kind of car the OP has. But at least on my 2001 3.0i, inspecting the ring gear through the inspection port on the AT is about 100x easier than removing the starter. Even easier if your inspection port cover is missing, as mine was.
Also note my rust-preventive oil layer in the photo.
If it were my car, with a general problem with the starter not spinning, I would do more electrical troubleshooting first - e.g., bypassing things that could be causing the failure without it actually being the starter that is at fault.
When I "rebuilt" (not much really needed) my starter when I had easy access to it, I really did not do much. Cleaned out some debris from brushes, renewed grease, replaced brushes (although existing ones had 70% left at about 186k miles), and cleaned up some electrical contact surfaces. No signs at all of anything deteriorating.
