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Hi All, I am attempting to reach out in all directions to try and sort this 10 or maybe 16 year old problem! My boat has a 1942 2L2 which was restored, marinised and fitted into the Narrowboat during the build in 2003, having only owned it for some 6 weeks, it is apparent that for at least the last ten years(as far as the records I hold go back) it has had a problem with chewing up the 13 tooth bronze starter pinion, having been replaced several times, with the starter being 'supposedly' refurbished at least once, it has a problem meshing on operation, although it meshes fine when pushed in manually unless the teeth butt, the previous owners had given up trying to fix it and just pushed it into mesh with a screwdriver and held it there with a dowel on a bit of string, this does of course work, but is a pain in the butt, and it also means you do not stop the engine as often as you should but leave it ticking over, this is not acceptable to an old Engineer! I serviced the engine and gearbox last week, in the process I had the flywheel cover off, as well as the starter end cover, the pinion slides easily enough into mesh when pushed by hand provided the teeth mesh, otherwise you need to turn it a bit, the trip between 1st and 2nd contacts appears to work fine, not tripping until 1" into mesh, the pinion teeth were a bit galled so I tidied them up with a Dremel, put a small chamfer on them, moved the starter even closer(+/-0.060") then operated the starter with the stop lever down and the compression levers up whilst we got oil pressure up following the oil change, so kept operating the starter in short busts, going in and out of mesh lovely about 8 or 9 times, 10th time tooth to tooth I presume. kerrang, it just spins up milling the end of the pinion, so 10 years it has been doing this, the starter bracket whilst not original, is a quite a substantial welded construction, probably hand start originally, but seems more than adequate, it has had some copper shims placed to space it away from the CL a bit, it has plenty of rotational clearance when in mesh, it has had various people look at it, including the main tech guy from the Gardner forum, no joy. I am at home just now, when I go back I intend to clean up the pinion end again, put a better chamfer on the pinion, move it up to the recommended minimum of 0.031" flywheel clearance, put a bit of cardboard under the 2nd stage contact and see if it still 'spins up' It has a 13 tooth pinion as it always had, someone on a forum has questioned that, should it be 12, I can find thus far no way of telling which pinion it should have, I intend to measure the diameter of the flywheel when I go back, currently the ring gear teeth are as machined, dead sq, the CAV manual I have just acquired a copy of, talks about a cast one being sq and a steel one being chamfered, do you have any ideas.?