So for the past two weeks I've been getting worse and worse performance from the starter. See the issue I thought was that we had some bad rains a couple weeks back. And the wife had to drive home through some slightly high water. I thought maybe the starter was gunked up or maybe the connections were dirty. Well today I finally got a chance to take a look at it. Well I see now that I need to drop that flywheel cowel to get the starter out. No getting around it. Now last year when I got the truck I put a brand new pos battery wire on. So the connection was good then. And I took it off and the connection was still clean. And the starter itself was not gunked up (so the water wasn't that high). But even after taking the connections off and cleaning them it still is acting up. I have to turn the key and let it click 3 to 4 times before it will finally start to turn. You can hear it click and engage but not spin. Once it does the engine fires right up. Now last year and this year are some of the hottest summers in a while. So I think it being the original starter it is just whipped. I'm just hoping it'll hold out until saturday.

 

So today I went ahead and dug in to replace the starter. Yep, had to drop the shroud to get the bugger out. But then found that the small ignition wire had to be disconnected BEFORE trying to drop the starter. Had to kind of wedge it in the wheel well to get it in a position to get a socket on the nut holding that wire on. And getting the shroud off was complicated by the fact that the tranny coolant lines were in the way and had to be kind of GENTLY pulled out of the way to get the shroud out. The option was drop the drive shaft (AIN'T gonna happen). Well got it out, then the starter, got the new one in and got it back together. Starts great now.

But I got thinking. I think one thing that I thought was my transmission could have been a problem with my starter. I have had random times when it sounded like it was jumping gears. But it sounded more like the 4x4 transaxel rather than the tranny (noise came from the front, not from right under me) But after reading I think my starter might have had the problem of random engaging that I've been reading here. I noticed scratches on the starter gear and that would explain why it was having trouble starting. If it was hitting while trying to engage while the truck was running it could damage the shaft causing hard rotations, which would be what I was dealing with lately. I'll know in the next few weeks if I don't hear that gear grinding noise again, that was it.

 

I recently replaced my starter, 97 Blazer 4.3 Vortec-6, and it wasn't that hard. It was hard, but nothing else had to be removed. I had the same problem with ALL wires had to be disconnected first.

Is it possible that the starter was already replaced, and not done right? That might have lead to the scratched gear and difficulty removing.

I too have noticed a large "clunk" sound like gears jumping, only in 4 wheel drive, and also apparently from the front. At most it's once per tire revolution, but not all the time, only big uphills. Not my biggest problem right now, but I will eventually look into it. I bought the vacuum actuator (under the battery, relatively cheap) since those rubber vacuum things like to wear out. But havn't replaced it yet.

 

The difficulty removing was the fact that there was no physical room to get it out. It had the frame to the right, the engine block to the left and the transaxel up front. The only way to get it out was back and down. And to do that the cowel had to be dropped. That is just how the truck is put together. Had nothing to do with how it was repaired. But yes. It was replaced once before. I think the reason it was engaging is I just found that my hose to the heater core is leaking fairly freely. The water is flowing down right on top of the starter and that could have shorted it out. Dunno. But NO it is not the transaxel.