Electric Starter.. Crazy or did I get screwed

It looks like they may have installed the gear backwards when they rebuilt the starter?

Sorry to see that happened.

Looks like you bought the wrong starter drive. They make both a LH and RH helix drive...depends on what side of the flywheel your on. You need the RH model.

...and now you need a new ring gear to...

almost looks as if the worst part of the damage was done by the pony pinion engaging from the backside of the flywheel. Hard to imagine how it could create that damage without first tearing off the front side of the teeth. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong?

When you get the new drive, I would either disassemble the starter or have a shop do it (maybe borrow a similar starter without motor field on it and put the drive on) to install in the hole and check the engagement before putting the juice to it. I believe this is shown in OM's page on how to do this conversion, but you can shift the drive in and out and turn it by hand with the armature sticking out the back to check everything.

I just talked to the place where I bought my starter drive (triodiode) on ebay, Weitzels DC Electric in Ohio. This is the place I talked about in the sticky thread "pony to electric start new parts source". He said he sells the 11 tooth in both LH and RH at the same time on EBAY. I said you ads don't say if it is LH or RH,and he said "you just have to look at the pictures". I don't really think that this is a great way of doing business and he did not seem concerned or say sorry or anything about my bad situation. There are a lot of people on ebay that sell the same items in many auctions at the same time. I guess he does not and you have to depend on the picture to figure it out. SO, Buyer Be Ware and shame on me for not checking before installing. I should of re-read my own thread before doing the install.

Hope this keeps someone else from making the same mistake.

Muzz

Sorry to hear of your misfortune😞 😞

Truth be known I made the same mistake.....but caught it as soon as I received shipment....was returned and exchanged no problem (same vendor as your source)

Can just imagine that sinking feeling after hearing the event.

Muzz, the damage to your ring gear looks old. Is the the ringear helixed as it seems not to be. None of our caterpillars old or new use helix drive, to be totaly honest its new to me on the delco MT starters all my engines use straight cut gears. Curious ? also if your supplier wont help you, just buy a new drive, they aren't expensive and are simple to fit.
Regards Gordon

Hi Gordon,
Not Muzz but I can't help myself from answering the starter questions.
The helical starter drive and matching flywheel is a pony motor matched thing normally. The early Cat direct electric starts had inertia (helical) drives on the Delco starter so they could be used on the same flywheels. After the "U" models there was a choice and the pony motor units still had the helical arrangement but the later style direct electric starters used straight cut gears.

Those original direct electric starters are hard to come by, pricy and pretty much obsolete. The current approach is to buy the after market helical drives, either LH or RH and mount them to the late 40, 42, 50MT Delco Remy starter that is commonly used today...........sooo if you don't have any pony motor start units you will not find any helical gearing in your collection of tractors.