My cousin calls me to night to help him get his Ford started.
He purchased an 80 something Ford F150 4x4.
It will turn over except it seems to have a stripped spot on the fly wheel and dead battery.
My first questions, do all fords have to be pulled home? This is the second ford he has owned and the second one I have pulled to his house.
My second question is, what ultimately caused the fly wheel to be damaged?

 

Yes, all Fords need to be pulled home.
Mine rode behind a tow truck at least once every year I owned it.

I doubt it's stripped just one spot on the flywheel, the odds of the engine stopping there everytime to give the starter time to grind away at it are slim.
More likely, starter is weak and not pulling(pushing?) the starting gear out enough to make good contact with the flywheel teeth, so it's just riding on the edge spinning away.


phox

 

Mis-Aligned starter can punch teeth off of a crappy weak flywheel (read FERD), especially how many times you need to use the starter on a FERD. Just tell him to use a whole can of starting fluid and put it out of it's (and your) misery!

 

Sometimes fords even have to be towed back home to the dealer when in the middle of test driving them. The salesman had a rather interesting look on his face when this F250 Social Disease with a V10 i was test driving just up and died. It was used but with only 30,000 miles on it and seemed to be a nice truck till i crapped out.
matt

 

you can turn the engine a little (pulling the belts to rotate the engine) and it will engage enough to turn over, but with a weak battery, it wouldn't start (combine that with a carburated engine on a cold rainy night).

The guy he bought the truck from threw in another fly wheel so we will probably change it out anyway. Would an after market starter be the more reliable way to go to prevent this from happening again or will shimming the starter appropriately keep it from happening?

 

Fix
Everthing
Required
Daily

 

without hijacking my own thread.
Anyone artistic enough to make a drawing of my nissan frontier towing a ford truck. Something I can print on an 8-1/2X11 page and hand in my rear window for the next time I have to tow a ford. I about to dub my truck the "Unofficial Ford Tow Vehicle"