'Make-shift' causes problems down the road

A guy brought me a starter today that was supposed to be off an International diesel farm tractor. It had a broken drive end housing (nose). We spent over a half hour trying to figure out what he had so I could order him another starter, as there was extensive damage and it would be a costly repair.

After a lot of comparison which I don't care to go into, we determined that the starter he brought me was not right for the tractor but was the one that was working on it. The correct starter had the wrong geometry on the mount housing to fit the tractor.

I'm not sure who or how this starter was put together, but it was obviously a make-shift job as the armature shaft had been cut off and poorly hand ground to fit. This was a contributing factor to the failure of the starter.

I've ordered a new housing for it and if it matches I should be able to repair his starter but it will be at the tune of about $350.00 due to how bad of shape it's in because it needs to be completely gutted! I could of probably got him a replacement cheaper but because I couldn't identify it, I couldn't order it!

I'm not sure how all this came together from a make-shift starter, to International Harvester assembling the tractor with several different engines or transmissions, to somebody swaping an engine or transmission during the life of the tractor. All I know is that the customer has an expensive fix coming!


7/15/10
Update; I was able to get the correct replacement housing and properly rebuild this starter. This was the most I've ever had to charge for this model of Delco starter!