My Extremely Reliable 1989 Ford F-150 Had Another Problem And It Involves Broken Teeth

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Have you ever had a car that you know is incredibly robust and reliable, but your partner or friends don’t agree, just because of bullshit like “things that actually happened” or “all the times it’s let them down?” I’m in that situation right now with The Marshal, the wonderful 1989 Ford F-150 that David bought me with the un-killable 300 cubic-inch inline six engine. The only problem is that a number of the things bolted to that un-killable engine have proven themselves to be quite kill-able. The most recent example of this phenomenon has once again rendered my truck immobile in my driveway, but at least what’s wrong is very easy to understand, visually. I’ll show you.

This started a couple weeks ago, when, after a canoeing outing with my kid, the truck refused to start again in my driveway. This had happened a few times before, but had always eventually restarted, but not before, say, stranding my wife and myself at a gas station with a pristine mid-century couch in the bed and a rainstorm looming. I finally figured that it could just be a bad starter, so I replaced the starter and then all seemed right with the world once again, at least as far as having a running old truck goes.

Cs Marshal Canoe

When I looked at the old starter I replaced, I did notice that the little gear was either really chewed up after all those years of use, or, less likely, that gear was hand-carved from a lump of iron by a tiny gnome. It looked rough:

Chewygears

Not great! But, I figured that was all behind me now that I had sent that old starter back to the Earth from whence it came, or whatever the hell Advance Auto does with the cores when you return them. Maybe they melt them down and make bondage gear. That’s on them.

So, I had a new starter in, and it seemed to be working great! I’d turn the key, 12 delicious volts would get sent to the starter, the little gear would turn the ring gear on the flywheel, the engine would fire, and off I’d go. Then I took another canoeing trip with the kid – the one where I almost got lost on the Eno river – and as I was backing the truck into the driveway to unload the canoe, it stalled.

Okay, no biggie, I’ll just re-start. But, nothing. Hm. Sometimes the battery terminals get wonky? So, I got out, reseated the battery terminals, but it wasn’t getting the starter going. I tried a few times, and I think once I cranked it in gear, with the clutch out by accident, and I think that was my major mistake. Normally, when this happens, the car just lurches a bit as you realize oh, crap, it’s in gear, and you almost turned your car in to a really crappy EV, lurching along by the starter motor.

So, I took it out of gear and tried again, only to hear an unpleasant, rattly whirring sound. I thought maybe the starter had become un-meshed from the ring gear? Maybe I didn’t tighten a bolt well enough when installing? Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to get the truck started without a hand crank, so I was lucky enough to round up some neighbors and we laboriously pushed the truck into the driveway.

At least the Marshal has the grace to always seem to fail right at or in my driveway, which I do appreciate.

This past weekend I decided to see what the hell went wrong, so I rolled under the truck. The starter was still installed properly, so it wasn’t that it worked loose or anything, as I could see it was still sitting right where it’s supposed to, all nice and snug:

Starter Inplace

I unbolted the starter and pulled it out, revealing the real problem:

Brokenteeth

Well, shit.

Look at that! five whole teeth snapped off the ring gear! How the hell does that happen? It can’t be when I tried to start it in gear, can it? I’ve done that at least once on every manual car I have, from my old Beetle to my Yugo to the Pao to the Scimitar (the Scimitar even had a 3-liter V6 making almost the same ravenous 140 hp that the truck makes, so it’s not like they were all tiny, low-power engines) and never once have I snapped off flywheel teeth. Can that really be what happened? What is this thing made of, matzoh?

Also, I would at least like to give a shout-out to that one tooth that refused to quit, even while surrounded by brittle, quitter teeth. I see you, buddy, and I appreciate how hard you’re trying.

Based on how chewed up the old starter gear was, maybe the old one was slowly wearing down teeth over years and years and this is just the inevitable result? Maybe the new starter is more powerful and pushed those old teeth past their limits? I wish I knew. If anyone has any thoughts on what causes this, I’d love to hear them.

If it was just a tooth or two I could probably ignore it, and the starter could still grab enough teeth to spin the motor, but the gap here is just too vast. Luckily, David said he’d fly down here and help me drop the transmission, and while we’re replacing the flywheel, we can replace the clutch and get the new clutch hydraulics installed, finally.

Then, maybe, just maybe, everyone will believe me when I tell them, as we’re sitting stuck by the side of the road or pushing this heavy beast into the driveway, that this is a fantastically reliable vehicle.

Maybe.

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Mercedes Streeter

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103 thoughts on “My Extremely Reliable 1989 Ford F-150 Had Another Problem And It Involves Broken Teeth”

  1. I used to own a 1984 Alfa Romeo Alfetta turbodiesel, which was one of my all-time favorite cars. When I bought it, it already had about 120,000 km on the odo and was sitting in someone’s backyard for about 3-4 years. Put a battery in it and started right up, but the clutch master cylinder was missing its cap, so the fluid was mostly water and had rusted the piston, so no clutch.

    I daily-drove it for almost a month without a clutch, just starting it in gear, then matching wheel speed with trans speed to shift, all in cross-city traffic. A month later the new master & slave cylinders arrived, and I drove that car for another 10 years and almost 100k without any issues.

    All I’m saying is that Jason’s “extremely reliable” truck can’t hold a candle to an old, neglected Alfa’s reliability.

    1. > I daily-drove it for almost a month without a clutch, just starting it in gear, then matching wheel speed with trans speed to shift, all in cross-city traffic

      That’s … Impressive. Driving by ear.

      1. Necessity is the mother of ‘git gud’ 🙂

        I have a very long history of buying shitboxes in terrible condition and driving them without breaking them more, while slowly working on fixing them.

      2. In 1971 I bought a 1960 Maserati 3500 Vignale spyder for all of $2000 (price of a stripper Pinto or VW according to the billboard next to our farm) which was 10 years of lawn mowing money. I originally wanted a 1932 Rolls Royce hearse for $750 but my parents wouldn’t let me get it. It kept breaking the clutch so I got to be pretty good at driving without the clutch. Years of driving tractors with non synchro gears may have helped. Other than the standing starts it was a piece of cake.

    2. I remember doing this with the manual trans. VWs I used to own to practice just in case I ever needed to do so in a mechanical (clutch goes out) emergency.
      In my experience a 1st to 2nd or 3rd to 4th gear upshift being the easiest to pull off.
      Downshifting of course is also doable, just requires patience and a light touch (w/o thr clutch).
      Thankfully I never needed to drive clutches for anything other than practice

  2. Not as familiar with Fords of that vintage, but most older starters need to be shimmed to ensure the gear teeth are meshed properly. Could be the cause of the excess wear. I had a starter gear explode once, it wasn’t shimmed enough so the gears were meshed too tight and it caused it to fail early.

  3. At one point my dad’s daily driver was a 1929 Mercedes SSK, kit car. You know the fiberglass body mail order build your own car special. He picked it up as a half-finished project and put a top and interior on it. Anyways, you’ve probably seen these things before, and you’re already thinking it’s a VW in cosplay, except this wasn’t one of the Beetle based Mercedes kit cars. No no no, it was Pinto based! Yeah… exactly.

    Anyways, why am I telling you all of this? Because that car had this exact same problem (along with so, so, soooo many others). You’d hop in the car, turn the key, and <<grindgeeeeeennchgch>>. Get out, undo the two leather belt straps that hold the hood down, reach inside, push on the fan blade to turn the motor over a dozen degrees or so hoping you find some teeth, then buckle the belts back up, hop back in, and try the key again.

    It got so bad that any time I drove the car I’d bring my boxweiler with me. See, when I got to the store I’d leave the motor running, top down, and the dog in the driver’s seat leashed to the steering wheel. If the motor’s running you don’t have to worry about starter teeth, if the dog’s in the driver’s seat you don’t have to worry about theft, and it always drew a crowd and since that dog LOVED attention it really was a win-win-win.

    Basically, Jason, what I’m trying to say is you can fly DT down and replace the flywheel and clutch and hydraulics and do everything right, or you can get a dog 🙂

      1. TriPawds are awesome! My guy is unsteady at low speeds, but, when there’s a rabbit around, he kinda gets up on plane and can really move

  4. This can happen if the truck has been started (attempted to start) while it’s already running. Try it! The grinding sound is .. not good. That could be what happened here (not by you of course Torch) or the teeth were just weak and sheared off from age, but it looks to me like things were forced on both the starter and flywheel side a few times.

  5. My first car in high school was a 1977 Chevette that I think had the same problem. It ate starter motors like candy. I eventually gave up on replacing the starter and ended up push-starting it to go anywhere. I was able to find a suitable incline anywhere, no matter how level the parking lot was.

    Now, looking back, I’m sure the flywheel needed to be replaced, but back then I was too inexperienced and too broke to do so. I think my Dad knew, but he was not willing to spend a whole weekend or pay a shop to replace the flywheel in a $300 car.

  6. Jason Jason JASON… you replaced the starter with its gears looking like that and didn’t think the ring gear would be in similarly bad shape????

    Tsk tsk…

    1. Cut him some slack Jack he’s a writer who drives old shitboxes not a mechanic.
      Once upon a time I replaced some air (egr? dont remember as it was easily 10 urs ago), pipe on a tdi vw 3 times bf I found the source for why that pipe kept failing (it was bc of a small coolant leak that was barely visually causing the a part in question to fail)

  7. Had a feeling the ring gear teeth got chewed up. Fortunately I’ve never had it happen to me, but I have seen it on a couple of my buddies’ cars over the years.

  9. Sounds like somebody neglected to put fresh Gefilte Fish Jelly on their Matzo flywheel.

    Have you even checked to make sure the rear Kneidlach or properly seated? Oy. Oy Gevalte.

  10. Otto is old enough to learn about physical health and strength training. He can push the Marshall sonyou can bump start it.

    Or you can push, but do you really want to do that, Torch?

      1. Carry a set of ramps with you.

        Before shutting off the engine, park one end of the car on the ramps.

        To restart the engine, roll it down off the ramps and proceed as usual.

        Once the car is running, drive back to pick up the ramps.

        tl;dr – byoh

      2. In 77 we were tooling around the Midwest in a SuperBeetle with a bad solenoid. Push-started that bug in Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa.

        Later we moved to a state with mountains

    3. Did it, for over a year, with a ’76 Dasher. Hill at home, hill at work, hill at girlfriend’s house. Everyplace else, just leave it run.

    4. I did that for a few days with my Cruze when it wasn’t apparent whether the battery or alternator were shot. It was fun for a little while.

  13. Anecdotal but helped a buddy work on is friend’s identical truck to this and my impression was it was generally kinda of an unrelible POS. Could have just been years of deferred maintenance catching up…

  14. “[L]ess likely, that gear was hand-carved from a lump of iron by a tiny gnome.”
    Ha. Apropos of that, in the 50s & early 60s, when air-cooled VWs were still a novelty in the US, some Americans would put stickers on their VWs that said “Made in der Black Forest by der Gnomes.”
    Also, Americans would put in their VWs similar stickers for various controls thusly:
    Das Glimmerblinken (headlights)
    Der Drizzleflippen (windshield wipers)
    Der Puttersparken (ignition)
    Das Schmokegedunka (ashtray)
    Die Warmercougher (choke)

    1. Das maschine control is nicht fur Gefingerpoken und
      Mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der
      Schpriggenwerk, Blownfuse, und Poppencorken mit
      Spitzensparken. Der Maschine is Diggen by Experten only.
      Is nicht fur Geverken by das Dummkopfen. Das Rubbernecken
      und Sightseeren keepen das Cottonpicken Hands in das
      Pockets. So Relaxen und Watsch das Blinkenlite.

    2. Why make up (admittedly funny) German words for car parts when you’ve got stuff like this:

      Das Uberdruckventil – Oil Pressure Relief Valve
      Das Oldruckgeber – Oil Pressure Sensor

  15. Pretty much everyone I know that has some kind of “always reliable” and/or “unkillable” older vehicle (and I’m in the construction industry so there are a fair number of these types), inevitably also has a AAA Gold Membership to go with it.

  16. It’s funny, I had already guessed what happened before reading. My wife and I used to own a 1975 Ford F100 Ranger with the 300 cu in six (and 3 on the tree for those who care). Funny enough, we had the same problem, intermittent no-starts until we finally got completely stranded in a Scheels parking lot. We finally managed to start it by popping the clutch and found the sweet spot on the flywheel. Evidently, we had been occasionally landing on the “bad spot,” resulting in the same symptoms you experienced.

    Maybe it’s a statistical fluke or maybe it’s a Ford/300 inline six thing?

  18. Oh, one other thing, lots of engines will stop in the same position in their cycle just because one cylinder has a tiny bit better compression than the rest among other reasons, so the starter will engage the ring gear in the same position on most starts. The bendix drive slamming into the same gear teeth over and over could be a factor. Any of course those missing teeth are exactly where you need to engage because that’s where the engine stops.
    Not a big problem with a manual transmission if you rock the car forward a few inches in gear, slightly more of a hassle to turn the engine forward a bit if you have an automatic.

  19. I have the same problem on my 1952 John Deere aka “Big Agnes”. There is a spot on the flywheel ring gear where all the teeth are gone. When it stops there, I can open the decompressors on the cylinders and use the hand clutch to rotate the engine forward a few degrees. Still a huge pain in the ass though.

    1. We had a John Deere A with the big flywheel and belt drive and you could start it by just grabbing the flywheel and spinning it. Think it had a magneto ignition. Miss that tractor.☹️

      1. I remember reading about old hand crank gas engined cars & how dangerous they could be to start due to engine kick back breaking arms. I remember thinking why not use a wheel instead of a crank?
        Then I saw a “starter” wheel on the side of an old tractor And I remember seeing an old black & white film with some car, (I wish I could remember the make/model), that had a removable steering wheel which was also used as a “starter” wheel to turn the engine over as well.

      2. yes the two cylinder JD’s have magneto ignition and if you are hand starting and don’t have the unobtanium spark plug covers you can get lit up pretty good since the deccompressors are really close to the spark plug leads

  22. Is that truck still using Farm Use plates or is that just an old picture?

    I would hate to think TheAutopian is promoting lawlessness, since presumably recreational canoeing doesn’t count as an agricultural use. I guess there could be an actual license plate on the back, but I’ll report this misdeed to Interpol just in case…

    1. I’ve come to accept the Farm Use plates like the sun rising and setting every day. It is a natural part of the universe, never ending. Replacing them with legal “First in Flight” plates would be like Torch no longer writing about taillight bars or vehicles where people’s hips can’t touch. That’s a world I don’t want to live in. Viva la Farm Use!

    2. NC is a rear-plate-only state. It’s possible Jason’s legal but keeps “Farm Use” in front as part of the truck’s history and because The Autopian front “license plates” (in standard 12″x6″, Euro, or New Prius bumper-block sizes) aren’t yet available.

  23. Something about old worn gears, you replace one of them and the gear or gears that it meshed with soon fail because they don’t match the new un-worn gear. If you’re lucky, and it sounds like you are lucky. In this instance, the old gear fails immediately. If you are unlucky, and who knows, maybe you are, the old gear messes up the new gear enough that the new gear will return the favor with the even newer gear.

  24. Cranking and cranking in the darkening parking lot
    The starter motor will not spin the flywheel
    This damn thing is falling apart; an F-old 150 getting older
    Another tow is paid for by the driver.

    1. I feel like I should be in a smoky darkened bar where everyone is wearing sun glasses and some guy is rhythmically beating a bongo drum. Also people use the word Daddy-O.

  25. Jason Jason Jason,

    Something about nothing more expensive than a free vehicle gift from David.
    More news on the Changli Lithium build please! I’m down to help with design or cells if you haven’t finalized yet.

      1. I’ve built my own power wall in my garage with prismatic LiFePO4 cells, I’ve build a few golf cart batteries using Headway cells, and I’ve built E-Bikes batteries and some other small projects with reclaimed tool pack 18650s and 21700s. I’ve been teaching students at my school some basic electrical skills using small solar and battery projects, and it just snowballed.

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