Reality is starting to settle in. This thing has had some less thank knowledgeable or careful hands working on it.
I went to start it this morning and the starter was making a terrible grinding sound, tried to turn over the engine and then stopped. Found that the bendix gear was just sitting on top of the the shaft and had been rubbing on the flywheel because it was engaging too far. That explains why it seemed hard to turn over despite the newer battery.
I have never worked on one of these before so I looked at a parts diagram and saw the wear on the drive gear and decided I needed a quick fix. I found a piece of tube that I could use as a spacer to fit over the spring and welded it to a washer, cleaned up the threads on the shaft and re-faced the teeth on the starter gear. (I got the depth ballparked by running the drive gear by hand onto the flywheel until it just touched and then added a 1/4". I used that depth and made my spacer stop the drive gear at that depth.)
Reinstalled. It turns over much better and much more quietly. It's not a factory fix and I'll probably have to get a rebuild kit for the drive eventually bit it works great for now.
Makes me wonder what else I'm going to find.....
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