grinding starter sound, otherwise starts fine

[petershen1984]

new symptoms are developing on my 740 - starter grinds as if the gear teeth is out of alignment, but otherwise the car starts up fine. Question is, is this gonna be costly? Will I do more damage by continuing to drive like this?

I also have another symptom where if I give the car full throttle, the engine seems to run lean and accelerates very slowly until I restart the car. Oddly, the car accelerates better with just half throttle than fully depressed. I suspect it's the AMM, but then I'd be having problems beyond 2000 rpm - which I don't. I also suspect a faulty transmission, being in the wrong gear at the wrong time-- I sensed the car occasionally trying to start on 2nd gear.

("and then it hasn't been my day, my week, my month, or even my year, but...." man, don't you guys miss FRIENDS?)

[A.Baker]

Sounds like the starter bendix is going south. normaly the starter teeth are softer then the flywheel! Butt since it is not your month. pull the starter and check the teeth. Don't be fooled if you do not see any bad teeth when you first look @ the fly wheel. Turn the engine by hand and look at all the teeth. If you see one bad spot there will be another 180 deg. from that spot. And yes it can be spendy!! the trans has to come out for flywheel replacement. Good luck.
A.Baker

[ozzimark]

i pulled my starter motor a few days ago. it's... hard to get out. more on that in my own thread

[petershen1984]

didn't sound abnormal to the mechanic. haha.. one of those days, when you think your car is sick but the doctor couldn't find any faults! good news for my wallet, the starter should last a while unless I don't wanna get stranded one day when it dies..

about the acceleration problem, I think because of my odometer failure, I may have missed the last spark plug replacement. we'll see what happens