Replaced starter, it was a breeze

[san rensho]

My starter has barely been turning over for a while now, so I decided to replace it with a rebuilt.

Took me about 45 minutes to take out the old one and put the new one in. The trick was to use a very long extension and go in from the passenger compartment to loosen the lower mounting bolt for the starter.

The biggest pain was getting out the tube from the air box to the throttle body and removing the throttle body along with the intake tube. After I did that there was plenty of room.

And what really made the job easy was removing the trunk hatch. It comes off with just 4 bolts that have to be removed. I scribed around the bracket holding the hatch so when I put it back on, I could align the hatch perfectly. With the hatch off, I could kneel in the trunk and access to everything was so easy. Next time I have to dig around on the engine from the top, I'm definitely going to take the trunk hatch off.

The new starter cranks like a champ now.