You can lubricate a bendix drive, you use graphite.

In practical terms, scribble on it with a soft pencil. A very old trick that one.

Another possibility with those symptoms is a worn flywheel ring gear. An engine usually stops rotating in the same place. The ring gear wears at this point until the teeth are to low for the cog on the bendix (or even in extremis a pre-engaged type) to "catch". Repeated attempts will often "catch" the next tooth and it'll go. Eventually the worn bit gets so large that the only option is to shove the thing in gear and push it to move the engine round a bit. I once had an old Austin 1800(!) with this problem.....

I've been here before, I'm pretty sure that the DMF is on the clutch side of the flywheel and that the gear ring is on the solid side - in which case, no.

Must be seriously damaged teeth on starter and/or flywheel because the starter should not begin to rotate until teeth are engaged.

I can now close this out. The problem started again with the onset of colder damp weather, i.e. the starter pinion could be heard spinning against the flywheel but the pinion didn't engage the ring gear to turn the engine. I removed the starter and for quickness replaced with a new one and everything is ok. Later, on investigating the old starter I found the grease between the pinion and the pinion shaft had practically solidified preventing the pinion from moving along the shaft. I stripped and cleaned it and re-greased and I now have a good spare. To get to the starter I removed the battery negative connnection, air cleaner, throttle body, fuel injectors (with fuel line and fuel rail attached) and inlet manifold, and various electrical connectors and air hoses. I also removed the top 2 mounting bolts and loosened the bottom mounting bolt of the alternator and pulled it forward to get access to the top and bottom left hand bolts of the manifold. With hindsight it would have been better to remove the alternator - the drive belt becomes slack and can be slipped off when the alternator is in the forward position. It would not have been necessary to cut the belt as instructed in the Haynes manual. On re-assembly I needed to use a pry bar between the alternator mounting bracket and the engine mounting to overcome the tension on the drive belt. I also found it necessary to lightly grease the injector collars to ease them back into the bores in the cylinder head

This was quite a lengthy job to get to the starter motor but on this car there is no other way.

Edited by IKM on 15/10/2013 at 15:09