On Dec 1, 7:48*am, stryped wrote:
I took that old techmseh apart his weekend. I had a question. It is
electric start and has never worked that I can remember. I could
always hear it spin when we tried to use it and assumed that teeth
were missing on the flywheel. But this wekend when I took it apart,
all the teeth were on both the pinion gear and the flywheel. When I
connected the starter to voltage, it spun. The problem seems to be
that the pinion gear is about half an inch or more from the flywheel
gear and the two never come in contact. Is the pinion gear on the
starter supposed to "move forward" when voltage is supplied to engage
the teeth? What could this problem be?

Well you see all starters have squirrels in them.

And when you push the starter button you are prodding the squirrel
into action on his little treadmill which in turn rotates the engine.

Obviously your squirrel is missing in action....did you find any
little bones in the starter?

;)

It sounds like the pinion gear has not been able to move up to the
flywheel..a common problem.

Try cleaning it.

Also the starter needs to have adequate torque to move the pinion...a
starter with subpar performance won't have the "snap" to move the
pinion in the time frame it needs to be engaged.

TMT