3.2 Starter and Speedo.

The starter was making a progressively nastier noise; the spin, no engagement, the awful grinding noise, so I took it down. Easier said than done as it is an 87. The sway bar, the strap, the shifter, the transmission supports all must be gotten out of the way first.
The problem was that the 10 balls that connect the starter to the pinion sleeve were mostly in the bottom of the starter! and as the balls fell out the grind happened more often. I cleaned it up, put all 10 balls back in and it has been fine since.
Best I can figure, since it appears to be rebuilt, black paint over green, someone must have left a ball out and that made it easier for the rest to follow.
The next success was with the speedo sensor as I finally quit troubleshooting it and put a new sensor in and it is fine now.The speed on the speedo is now the actual speed.
Ned Monaghan

Those balls can be pretty tricky! First time I took mine apart, it looked like somebody left one out ... there was about a 3/8" to 1/2" gap before I even started to disassemble, so after I got everything cleaned up, I took one to the local bearing supply house, and got two dozen new ones. With plenty of moly grease, I put in enough new ball bearings -- they were 'standard' 1/8" -- to leave about a 1/8" 'gap' when all were touching as best I could get them to cooperate! Glad to hear yours worked fine when cleaned and reassembled! I bet your wallet was happy!

I guess I just don't quite understand why a magnetic pickup sensor would fail the way yours did ... you would think it would either be OK, or completely dead! Learn some thing new every month or two, anyway!!!

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Warren Hall
1973 911S Targa