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Have bought a gear reduction starter from MS to use on my 65 s . The old inertia one engaged the rear of the starter ring , where as the new one engages the front , the ring gear teeth have a chamfer on the rear where the old one engaged but no chamfer on the front , will this be ok or should the ring gear be changed.....Nick

all the gear reduction starters are pre-engaged (i.e, they push the bendix cog onto the ring gear, rather than pulling the cog in like the old inertia starters.

there are two types, which have a cog to suit which ever ring gear you have.

the pre-engaged one has straight teeth to match the pre-engaged ring gear (i.e the ring gear has a lead in on the correct side)

where as the inertia one has quite angled teeth as the ring gear doesn't have a lead in on the side it needs.

this works fine, i have one fitted to my car and it really cranks it over, the big advantage (bar the better cranking) is that there is none of the 'kick back' that standard inertia starters suffer from, so like a normal pre-engaged starter, you can just keep the key turned until the car fires up.

the worse thing about them is getting the lower 'captive / floating' bolt done up, you need a very thin/short spanner to turn it a flat at a time, it takes ages to do it up tight!

Thanks Rich
This seems to make good sense , I'll fit it whilst engines out hopefully will be easier .....Nick

There were/are two types of gear reduction starter from MS.
The lightweight one, and the more normal one...

I found that the light weight one would not fit along with a 123ignition
distributor so I had to use the (cheaper) non-light-weight one.
PLEASE CHECK: I am not sure if the light-weight one is still available...

What Rich says about the accessibility is true, I found that it was
easier to use a butchered 9/16" spanner and go in from underneath
when trying to do this with the engine in the car. A "cheepo" open-ended
spanner sawed off to be about 4" long did most of the work, then final
tightening with something a bit longer.

My CR was previously about 13:1 and this type of starter-motor had
no problems cranking this engine over.

With the type I have, you don't actually need a separate solenoid...

Ian

the lightweight ones are Brise, there is a couple of different shapes of them, i.e solenoid on the back, or on the top, im not a fan of them as I had a succession of failures on my race car, though to be fair the one on my gtm (a spare off my race car) has been ok, its only failed the once (they have a thermal cut out or something in them that stops them working when they get hot) - it doesn't like extended periods of cranking (i.e spinning for oil pressure) - they are very light though, which is a big advantage to a lot of people!

I have to use the Brise one (a thin 'end solenoid type' on the gtm as a normal pre engaged starter will not fit as it fouls the rear bulkhead .

the cheaper ones Minispares sell are powerlec and are quite heavy - heavier than a standard starter motor, but boy, do they perform.

I actually cut a slot into the threaded end of the bolt, so once the bolt is engaged into the thread of the endcase, I can poke a short screw driver in from the other end and 'screw' the bolt nearly tight, then just nip it with the spanner

neither of them need the old type solenoid, but if its there you can leave it all wired and just use the jumper wire provided with the starter to kick the internal solenoid in - a neat solution as its totally reversible if you go back to a pov spec std starter in the future.

its a lot easier than getting an old inertia starter wound 9v, that's for sure!

rich@minispares.com wrote:I actually cut a slot into the threaded end of the bolt,
so once the bolt is engaged into the thread of the endcase, I can poke a short
screw driver in from the other end and 'screw' the bolt nearly tight,
then just nip it with the spanner

This is my nomination for the most innovative idea of the year!
Nice One, Rich... That trumps my 4-incher... (spanner).

I will most definitely do this when mine comes to bits next time...

A more "engineering-type" solution would be to spark-erode a hex
in the end if the bolt so it could be done up with an Allen key.

Ian