Over the weekend I pulled the starter from my 2003 2.3L. I decided to at least try to rebuild it and taking it apart was pretty easy. Until I got to the pinion/bendix gear. Short story.... I can't find rebuildparts anywhere, and i spent WAY too much time trying. (You did warn me, Ron D....) So now I have a new starter in my truck and I decide to take the old one apart some more to see what makes it tick. When I was researching how-to and looking for parts I never ran across pics showing this thing's guts, so I thought I would share.

In my hand, mine spins one way like its supposed to but it was really rough and there was plenty of grinding noise. I don't think this was the original problem, but for a long lasting rebuild I wanted to get that cleaned out. With no parts anywhere, and wanting the truck back on the road, I bought the new starter and got her in. Then I went back to smash this baby apart. If I were doing this again, and hoped to reassemble the thing, I probably would asked a machine shop to press the two halves apart to try to prevent damage to the outter cup. But like Ron said, much easier and faster to just get a new one

Anyway.... here are the pics if you always wanted to know what's in one of these things.