Memorial Day Start Bolts Fun

[jonstine]

Lesson learned. When your truck starter acts up out of the blue, and you clear out the garage to work on it during a rainy Memorial Day weekend in central Texas, you should always crawl under the truck before cranking it to see if anything needs to be hand tightened first. Starter skipped/ran for a split second last night, but still turned over. So I knew I needed to get under there and see if anything was loose, take it apart, put new bolts in, etc. Went to start it just now to pull it into the garage for repairs, heard a clink, a clunk, and a few pieces of metal bounce on the driveway. Shim and bolt laying under the truck. Great. I knew I should have climbed under there first... Now I get to fix this stupid mistake in my driveway, probably in the rain, definitely at night. Sounds like a pretty good start to a weekend for me! If it ain't raining, we ain't training.

 

[jonstine]

Any advice while I'm climbing under there to fix it? I've got new bolts, it's been shimmed and running fine for a year, I've got Blue Loctite. Anything I'm missing? I tried to post a couple pictures, but for some reason the Manage Attachments link isn't working.

 

[richingalveston]

make sure you have the rear brace, if not, get one

 

[jonstine]

Done. Wife requested an ALL STOP right when I got the starter out of the truck yesterday evening. Happy wife happy life. Went to HD this morning to get extractor bits, got it knocked out with minimal issues. Really spent time making sure the rear bracket was lined up and tightened downed correctly this time. I had to put a spacer in (just used a slightly larger nut in between the engine block and the bracket) to get it aligned correctly and really tightened down well. The bracket had some wear in the engine block hole where it had kind of been banged around over the last year or so, should be fixed now. I put blue Loctite on every thread, and made sure it was all lined up correctly and tightened hand tight. Started fine over about a dozen starts this morning and afternoon so it appears to be good - for now.