Any idea what this came off of?

[tagster]

I was digging around in my bildge, found a few broken pieces of metal.

I'm thinking the one chunk looks like it's a dampener plate, but that would be a guess.

[tdw]

Is that a broken coil spring ? I'm not saying that I know what the rest of it is but if you can identify the circular bits it might be a start.

[hellosailor]

A coil spring and a retainer plate...might be part of a hatch latch? Although the spring looks more like an engine part, a valve spring perhaps? Either way it looks more like someone left "the old one" in the bilge when it fell, not something that just fell in without being noticed--or replaced.

Have you ever been that deep into the bilge before?

[tagster]

I'm pretty confident they came from the engine. They were in the blidge right beneath my transmission bell housing.

[tagster]

No I haven't been that deep into the bilge before. And what's better is I was digging around with a magnet to try and find a socket I dropped.

[tagster]

I should maybe provide some context, the reason I'm down here is because I have some intermittent racket coming from around the bell housing. So I'm pulling off my starter and looking inside with a mirror while spinning the engine over by hand to try and determine if anything inside there broke.

I just happaned to run into this stuff along the way.

[Hawkeye25]

Those look like parts of a self destructing dampener plate that connects the transmission input shaft to the flywheel. The one triangular piece looks like one of the bosses adjacent to the starter cog that got broken off when the loose spring got caught between the flywheel teeth and the boss. Better pull your bellhousing and fix the problem.

Hawk

[tagster]

Hawkeye25: Thanks, that's what I was suspecting it might be.

I pulled my starter off an looked inside the bell housing at the back side of the fly wheel with a mirror. It looks like there is a busted piece of metal right there but it's impossible to tell.

Given the intermittent racket coming from the engine, the chunk of metal from the bilge, and the appearance of things I'm willing to bet I do have a broken damper plate. I don't really have the tools or know how to go much further, I guess I'll have to hire a mechanic to fix this thing.

[Omatako]

In some of the older cars the starter bendix was an inertia type that got flicked forward by the rotation of the shaft. On the end of the shaft there was a two inch long coil spring that damped the bendix at the end if its travel and also provided the impetus to return it to it's original position when the engine started.

The coil spring looks just like one of those, thick strong and brittle as hell when it gets old.

It's possible that one of these broke before and the bits got lodged in the bell housing and now something has caused them to be dislodged again. It would be an engine removal if there was a previous breakage had happened and if the bits got caught up, the PO may have decided it would be OK to leave them be.

Of course this is just speculation, but the end of your starter shaft will tell if it's close to the truth or not

Andre

[tagster]

Ah well who knows.

I pulled the starter the case of it that encapsulates the starter shaft and pinion has some scaring on it. I decided to go ahead and try and pull my bell housing and it's proving to be rather difficult. I'm not quite sure how I can get at it. I was thinking I would unbolt the propeller shaft, disconnect the transmission and slide it back to get off the bell housing. But I got stuck on step one.

Here is my drive shaft, with half the bolts pulled.

The bolts that are pulled run in to the left side of it (from this angle) and are nearly as long as that big red grommet. The other side has nuts, which have threaded heads coming out of that thing. So even when it's good and unbolted it doesn't seem like it's going to come out unless I move my transmission forward. But the whole idea of coming from the transmission side was to do it without moving the engine.

If Omatako's theory is correct, those broken shards of coil spring would probably be older than this engine then. But then again, a starter of such nature might be older than this boat (1970).

Anyway, anybody have any tips for pulling my transmission?