The great starter pilot/bearing/bushing mystery

[kourt]

Greetings van friends,

I met my fellow Eurovan friend today for some starter replacement work.

We removed the old starter from his 2001 Eurovan Weekender automatic. The starter was old, but also occasionally needed a loving tap from a hammer to engage.

That old starter has a pilot and bearing installed on the plunger forward of the pinion gear, and the bearing inserts into a machined hole with a bushing installed within, in the transmission case, probably for stabilization.

The replacement starter from FCP Euro (Bosch SR34X, 1 986 S00 809), which is pictured on the FCP website with the same pilot and bearing, arrived with no pilot or bearing at all. Here's a comparison of the old and new starters:

There was a sticker on the new starter that said, "BOSCH Notice of Interchangeability: This unit may differ from the original.. However, it is an authorized replacement." so we installed it and it definitely starts the van just fine.

However later today, my friend texted me this photo of a card that was in the box with the starter:

"this bushing" implies that there is a bushing supplied with the card. No bushing was in the box, and no pilot or bearing on the new starter.

The question is: should a bushing and pilot/bearing have been supplied with the starter? The pinion on the new starter has a cap that is peened in place on its end. Where is the documentation for the bushing install? I don't see any documentation anywhere. Nothing in Erwin. Is the bushing no longer necessary?

Notice the difference in the snouts of these starters--the new starter has more substance and casting in the area that mates with the transmission case.

Reading into this a little more, I see the actual bushing is a brass bushing in the transmission housing, and this pilot bearing on the old starter is plunged into it when the starter is engaged. Does the new starter have a different deisgn that no longer requires the pilot bearing and bushing system? This is my belief, but I need some confirmation from The Samba.

Another possibility is we received a SR34X starter that was rebuilt incorrectly. Every SR34X I see on the internet has the pilot, bearing, and bushing pictured.

We need some clarification on this problem.

kourt

[Saturn]

[kourt]

Thank you for this reference. FCP doesn't screw up their parts often, so I figured it was correct, and this is just an updated starter design. The van is driving nicely.

There must be an additional bearing inside the enlarged casting of the snout, behind the pinion gear. That would explain the deletion of the pilot bearing in front of the pinion gear.

kourt