Again, this is about my new addition – red 92 244. I scrub cleaned everything on the front and left, ready to replace everything needs to be replaced and put everything back together. While I’m there I took a careful look at the starter motor. It absolutely horrified me to see the two bolts “mounting the starter to the engine” are bolted from the tranny side through the flywheel housing into the starter. Don’t laugh at me. I replace starters on other cars I used to own, never one on any of my bricks. I always assumed that “the starter is bolted to the engine” – You have a long bolt going into a larger hole on the base of the starter and torque into the tapped hole on the engine and should be pretty easy to remove. The way this starter is mounted is like the engine is bolted onto the starter to me.

Anyway, I went to look at my 91 745T and its starter is mounted the same way. However, with the large distributor mounted at the rear end of the engine, there is some room you might be able to squeeze in a large wrench to remove the two bolts. On the 92 244 in question, the head of the bolt is way into to tranny side behind the firewall. If that darn starter ever fail on me, how on the earth can I remove and install it? Undo the driveline, shifting the engine and tranny as one piece forward somehow to gain access?

During the past year of my 3 Brick ownership, I did a lot of work on them to restore them to almost perfect condition. I have to say, I’m very impressed at the way those cars were designed for ease of repair work. However, I can not agree on this. Any inputs out there to ease my fear of a starter work in the future? Thanks for reading. Erwin