I'm not very good at cars obviously, but as per Shoebox's picture, am I removing the two bolts on the top left and wires that you see in the picture here? http://shbox.com/1/starter.jpg

or am I removing numbers 16 here? http://shbox.com/1/starter_gear.jpg

I would assume both?

And how the hell are you guys getting to these? Did you guys remove your y-pipes to get a little more room?

 

numbers 16 that come straight up from the bottom

 

those are the ones that are seemingly impossible to remove... header heat + rust =

Been spraying PB blaster on them off and on and giving them a try every so often but no luck so far

 

Got the bolts out, came out pretty easy with a longer wrench, but I either have to take the y-pipe off of my mac mids, or struggle my *** off getting the wires off since there's so little room to work.

The problem with the first option is that on two of the bolts from the y-pipe/headers I can only manage the slightest turn of wrench (not even enough to take it off and put it back on to get another slight turn.

I guess I'm going to make a trip to the hardware store and buy some more tools.

 

yeah it won't be easy but you shouldn't have to drop the exhaust, that could be a whole other set of issues in itself.

 

I think I had to use a breaker bar on those two bolts, they were really in there and did not want to budge very easily.

 

I just changed mine out. And it was easy..but it has a trick to removing it easy. you got to play with it to figure out how to take it out. You got to turn it like twice around while pulling it out to clear all the parts around it. But yes, just the 2 bolts hold it in place. Trust me, after you figure out the rotation that you must do to take it out, it's all down hill from there. Don't forget to puit back the spacers that it has, you need those.

 

I've always unbolted the starter wiring first using a long extension and getting to it in the front over the motor mount... Then I unbolt the two starter mount bolts... On mine, I have to flip the starter so the nose is pointing straight up and I pull it down backwards.

 

What size nuts are holding the wires in place? I kind of gave up for awhile, seeing as how I'm not driving it tomorrow anyways.

Maybe i'll just put it back in place and try to reach over the crossmember to unscrew those.

Thats been the hardest thing to figure out so far since there's so little play room.

 

on the wires they are something like 1/2" and 5/16" maybe I cant remember

 

I'm definitely attempting this in the after work tomorrow, I just have to locate the rest of my sockets that fit on a 1/2" wrench, since I have a long enough extension to go over the crossmember

 

+1. I do it this way every time. Took mine out twice in the last week.

 

I ended up just dropping the y-pipe anyways because I wanted to have a look around the flanges anyways to see if there was evidence of a leak. I can't see evidence but boy were the harder to get bolts loose. Hopefully when I toss it back on there it stays tight.

Oh and p.s. I had my starter tested and it was very weak because I have an oil leak somewhere (maybe even two places) that caused oil to get in the starter, which dulls the conductivity of the starter? (This is what the guy at the autoparts store told me) So can I just take apart the starter and clean it out? or is it necessary to replace it?