DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Ok, I have encountered my first 'teething' problems (no pun intended!) with the A111.

The starter had sounded a bit rough for the last few starts so I whipped it off to check things and the bottom bolt was loose, more on this later, but the starter seems fine.

I gave everything a clean and noticed the leading edges on the teeth on the ring gear and starter were chamfered as expected but there was some burring & slight wear on them. I have started to de-burr them all with a triangular engineers file and magnet to catch the filings - tedious as hell - I keep doing 10 teeth at a time! However I am wondering if the loose bolt may have caused the teeth to wear slightly and cause starting to be a bit noisy.

It appears the gear on the starter engages fully as it is free on the shaft but I'm wondering how much overlap there is on the starter to ring gear teeth? A machinst friend has suggested machinging the starter motor mating face down by 1-2mm to increase engagement, however before I jump in I thought I'd ask for opinions on here as this seems fairly drastic?!

Cheers.

Gill.

Gill,

I think you are doing the right thing by de-burring the teeth. Any machining to the starter mounting face is probably not required (although could be restored if need be with the use of same thickness shim). It is a tractor after all and also many years old - did they worry about starter noise when it was new ? Most (un-informed )people think that the loud diesel knock is a sign that the big end is on the way out!

Chris

Oh yeah they knock pretty well! I was talking to a guy at Newark tractor show last year who restored the 'best European' Junior on show there. He said one of the reasons he eventually sold it was the noise of the engine - personally I think they sound great!

I will only machine the starter down as a last resort, I've cleaned about half of the flywheel up so far and may possibly get it finished on Sunday but I'm not in a massive rush, so I'll see how it goes.

How is progress with yours Chris?

Cheers.

Gill.