Grind Grind Grind Redux

[kevin_standlee]

This time the grinding noise is from the starter on my van. Lisa said last week that it sounds like the Bendix is failing. I've made arrangements with my mechanic in Fremont to leave it with him on Friday morning. Since I'm taking the train to Sacramento this Saturday and renting a car to go up to Yuba City to visit my mother, sister, and nephew, I don't need the van, and I can use transit to get to and from work while the van in the shop. Even more conveniently, it turns out that I have an errand to my company's Fremont warehouse that can be conveniently done on Friday morning, after which I can take the van to Fremont Wheel & Brake, then walk over to Centerville and take Amtrak back to San Jose, then work from my apartment in the afternoon.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Bendix?

Over here, that's a manufacturer of popular chocolate-coated after-dinner mints ...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I had to look it up myself. It's part of the mechanism that disengages the starter motor once the engine has already started. When it fails, you get the grinding noise that you'd get if you turned the key to start while the engine was already running.

I generally let Lisa deal with the mechanical issues; she knows them much better than I do. On an early date with her, she ended up showing me how to change my alternator.

I'm not totally non-mechancial. In fact, Lisa says I'm a decent "scrub nurse" in that I will hand her the right tools when she asks for them without giving her back-talk. Also, I'm useful for lifting heavy loads, like when I helped her change the transmission in her pickup truck.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Huh, is that different from the solenoid? My understanding is that you need active power to engage the starter motor, and it disengages passively (springs, maybe?).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't know; I would have guessed a worn spring, myself, but when my mechanic uses the same phrase as Lisa without any prompting, I assume they must be on the same wavelength. This is not a matter with which I'm familiar, per my comment to autopope above.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That's not an Army-surplus Bendix, is it? (Maybe the spelling is different; I'm thinking "Memorandum".)

In which context it's a brand of washing machine not seen in decades.

[delosharriman]

Same people, originally, I believe. They also built auto-shifting internally-geared hubs for bicycles, & the timer mechanism which stood in for a flight computer on the Mercury capsule. But in the case of the automobile starter motor, "Bendix [sc. mechanism]" has become a generic term.