ClubCJ - The CJ Lancer Club

anybody else suffered through a catastrophic failure of a starter motor yet?

mine stopped working Monday night on my girlfriend at her work. no solenoid click or anything. did the normal tricks like hit it with a hammer while holding the key on, no love.

left it there for two nights as the next day i went and bought one that was supposed to fit, but didn't match when i pulled the old one out.

5 hours of driving around to different places chasing one (none of them matched) i went to mitsubishi, and knock me down it was going to be $870 from them and wouldn't see it for two days. (in Sydney)

next day she had some seedy looking blokes hanging around the carpark trying to get into cars so got it towed back to my house.

got a tip this morning from a friend that another place may have one but it turned out to have the wrong number of teeth on the sprocket.
half hour of them calling around i'm now getting it re-built for under $300 and should be ready tomorrow afternoon.

jesus christ what a waste of time this week has been.

This is why I have roadside assistance, at least to get the car towed to a safe location.

Yeah the Mitsy parts are not cheap. But with that cost you would think it could be done the same day, not like the Lancer is an uncommon car, should have loads of spares around.

Mitsubishi do not keep spare parts on hand except for high volume service parts, gaskets, belts, filters, washers, brake pads, hoses, etc
wreckers are a good place to find replacement components like these.

Your local Burson's Auto Parts is another great resource to find spare parts.

Bursons was one of the places i tried. The starter motor they had matched up exactly up untill you counter the teth on the sprocket. It had 8, mine has 9.

How did you look for it. Did you go by looking for a Lancer starter motor or did you look for the part number specifically? There are some other cars that use the 4B11 engines, including outside of Mitsubishi.

Every way. Vin, year/make/model, engine type (4b11t).

Got it back from being rebuilt today, new armature, brushes, bearings and bushes. For $275. I'll fit it back in tomorrow morning and it will be good as gold again

quick update-

finally going again this afternoon.
fit the rebuilt starter on saturday morning and it spun but didnt start my car, didnt even turn it over.
spent a couple hours playing with it before giving up with no results. pulled it out again and luckily my girlfriends dad could take it back to the shop who rebuilt it for me.
they either didnt fit the slipper clutch properly or wired it in back to front so it would turn but wouldnt drive the gear with a load on it (could actually stop it with your finger.)
got it back about lunch time today (he picked it up again for me and dropped it off at my work). so finished work and shot home to put it in and its all golden again.

so happy to have the car back on the road even if its only been a week. but now ill actually get to enjoy my merlin tune properly this coming weekend.