Help with starter removal on '67

[Christopher Hoffman <imperial67@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gee, I guess I was lucky... the biggest challenges I encountered were
gravity and light.

My '67 Crown's starter finally cranked its last crank on a Sunday evening
when I had driven it to the office (squeezing in a pleasure drive with
having to work on a weekend) and parked it two floors underground, where no
tow truck could get to it if I wanted to go that route.

Thankfully, I had the new starter in the trunk and my tools on board. The
car had long presented a hot-starting challenge that suggested excessive
draw when the engine was hot (and everything expanded). I had been planning
just to replace it for some time, but procrastination got the best of me.

Besides working upside down and in the dark, the biggest challenge was the
lack of clearance under the car for me and my blood-drained arms. It took me
about 15 minutes to undo all the hardware, and then another half hour to
find a place the 300-pound starter would fit out of the engine compartment.
(OK, it's only about 35 lb, but things weigh more when they're being held
over your head by arms that needed a few more universal joints for elbows).

I was finally able to pass it to the front of the engine and drop it just
between one of the transmission cooler lines and the idler arm (or was it
the pitman arm), holding the tranny lines apart with my third and fourth
hands while I twisted and turned the starter with my first two hands. It was
like juggling with an anvil.

Only once I got the new one back into position did I realize that the top
bolt was actually a stud, so I had to remove the starter (no place hang it),
fetch the stud from the old one, and once it was reinserted into the bell
housing, it gave me a place to hang the starter while I reattached all the
other bolts.

The most remarkable result was hearing the long-forgotten sound of the
"Highland park hummingbird" when I cranked the new unit. Oh, my, how long
had that old, slow starter been ready to give up the ghost? In daylight,
inspection of the original starter revealed it was just that: the one that
UAW workers in Jefferson installed in 1967, some 124,000 miles earlier.

And while doing car repairs in the office parking garage didn't seem like
the ideal condition, had the original starter given me just one more start,
I would have had to do this wherever I stopped the car for gas on the way
home... like somewhere in the general south LA area. I thanked the car for
its caring nature and, best of all, never had a hot-start problem again.

Lesson learned: replacing the starter in an Imperial teaches Zen patience,
strengthens your arms, and builds character!

Chris in LA
67 Crown
78 NYB Salon