Engine: Starter housing breaks

[57studesilverhawk]

I was driving my 6 cly. Silver Hawk to the city last week, 100 mile trip , no problem starting, ran good but when I got to the city, a slight hesitation in rush hour traffic. no problem get to our destination in an 1/2 hour. Stop and park only to find I cant use the hand brake. Now open the hood and the starter is hanging down only held by the battery cable. The housing has broken on the starter, then sheared the bottom bolt. When the starter dropped it landed on the hand brake cable and shorted out the battery terminal, cut the brake cable in two and welded it shut, that's why no hand brake. Have any of you heard of this before and why. Thanks for any information, looking forward to taking Hawk to St.Lewis in Aug.

[TWChamp]

Wow, when you break something ....you do it good. LOL
Actually I've never heard of such a failure, and can't imagine what could have caused it. Once in a while I hear of a starter drive jamming in the flywheel, but not to the extent of breaking the housing on the starter.

[Dan Timberlake]

"The housing has broken on the starter, then sheared the bottom bolt."

So a portion of the housing is still bolted solidly to the engine?

[StudeRich]

The Lock Washers on the 2 Starter bolts must have been missing and the bolts under Torqued.
I am sorry to hear that you had such a catastrophic failure, never heard of one THAT Bad.

If you never cranked the Engine after leaving for the Trip, it must have broken when you Started it, and must have made some serious NOISE.

[57studesilverhawk]

It started fine with out any trouble at the start of the journey, and yes they had been torqued when installed last year, also the lock washer was still in place on the portion that was left on the upper one. All gone on the lower one as the head was also gone. I have never heard of this before, a 1 in a million maybe chance.

[altair]

You must have hit something on the road. My wife ran over a 12" x 12" wood block, didn't see it, didn't hear anything. It hit the exhaust pipe, broke off the manifold and burned off the ignition wire to the rear spark plug. Her comment, the car is making a bit of noise. On a later trip I saw the block on the side of the road it was so big you could see it for a 1/4 mile and she saw and heard nothing. Not to say you hit something but!!!

[DEEPNHOCK]

SWAG.....
Is the one bolt for that started housing supposed to be a 'stepped' bolt?
If the wrong bolt was installed at some time, it could have allowed the starter to move and put the ring gear/bendix drive unter stress that might have caused the housing to crack/brake.