Someguywithacar

Alright so my starter broke a few days ago, the bindex wouldn't engage the flywheel and I had to tow it home. So I replaced it with a remanufactured one, got four starts then it happened again, towed it home AGAIN; replaced it again and same thing on sixth start. This time I started it ran it some, came back parked it then killed and started it four or five times so I wouldn't have to tow it if the starter broke. Having your car towed is embarrassing My flywheel is fine, no broken teeth I spun it 360. There's no smoke in my exhaust idles fine.

It's running fine, it will surge occasionally though with constant acceleration but I think that may be my fuel pump getting ready to go. I noticed my coolant was a little low, but I saw my water pump was dripping some so I filled it up and left it with that it went from full to quarter full in 4 months.

All I've done to the car since I bought it is spark plugs, wires, fuel filter, resealed the intake manifold and threw in ls7 lifters.

Someguywithacar

Also it's a 1995 Firebird Trans am, 150k miles

GrandNational7

What kind of starter are you using?

trilkb

iTrader: (4)

So nothing is breaking off the starter or the car. The starter just doesnt enage like it should? Like the bendix just sits there and spins? or does it try to come out and hits your flywheel?

It kind of sounds like your original starter initially broke. You replaced it with a shitty reman one, and youve gone through 2 more reman ones? Maybe you shouldnt use a reman starter? I dunno?

KFtransam

Carefull with that water pump leak.. Your distributer is mounted underneith it and is notorious for failure from exactly that situation

Could explain your surging aswell

Someguywithacar

Sorry guys, just got home from work.

Plain jane remanned ones

Yeah nothing is breaking off my block or the starter housing, the bendix isn't extending or it's not extending near enough. It's gotta be somethin besides the starters though right? I mean what are the chances that two starters are going to die after 5 starts?

It's actually dripping down the countours of the engine and going to the left of my opti and down the side of the block leavin the opti dry but yeah it needs replacing.

FormulaJoe

iTrader: (5)

As long as it isn't gushing coolant, you should be fine. Especially being that you have a vented opti which is fully enclosed. I've seen vented and unvented optis that had crazy amounts of coolant and/or oil on them and they ran just fine. Not optimal of course. Though I'm sure there are people out there that had optis go bad from minimal amounts of liquids.

As for your starter, what trilkb said is kind of what I'm thinking. Though 2 bad starters does sound unlikely, you never know.

sleepy_z

iTrader: (8)

Does it seem like the starters were still engaged after the car was started?

Someguywithacar

No the starter disengaged like normal, no grinding or anything

sleepy_z

iTrader: (8)

Did you have the starters retested? If so what failed on each?

SSdreamz

iTrader: (3)

id bench test the starters to see if they were the issue before just going and throwing more money at starters. If the starters check out fine, its time to check voltage at the starter and battery. when i had this problem, the battery was the suspect. i put in a junk battery and jumped it, and it started fine. took the battery to get tested and something internal with it went bad.

lt1slowz28

I once had a bad opti that somehow caused my starter to die, bad firing order or something.. triple checked everything... replaced the opti and starter to find the car ran like a dream

Someguywithacar

Well guys I ended up taking it to a mechanic after I checked everything, engine electrical and all and it turned out that my flywheel is bent. I'm not sure how my flywheel bent but it did. $450 to replace