Starter for briggs vanguard

[38racing]

303777-0332-02
At least that is what's on the shroud. Shroud says it was made for noma but it's in my elderly neighbour's poulan. Her son said it was running wouldn't start. My first test had a very slow crank on dead battery and booster. I told him to charge/replace battery. He says he charged it and still not cranking good and burning and smoking. I tried with new battery, same thing ,flashes of light below starter. So I pulled starter which was standard with a plastic gear. So I put on an old used and it starts fine with his battery and verified charging works. So now I'm home looking up starter price and found ipl says it has steel flywheel, so I'm assuming starter gear should be steel. Ipl shows starter 691564.
https://www.bantasaw.com/catalog/viewpr ... ?i=&p=6681
Looks different than standard and gear kit is 496881.
https://www.bantasaw.com/catalog/viewpr ... ?i=&p=6680
I've never actually worked on a vanguard twin but I'm guessing it's safe to assume someone in the past put the wrong starter on it. I will slip over tomorrow with a magnet to make sure flywheel on it is indeed steel.

[38racing]

Now I'm confused. I went to parts tree for the ipl. Showed same as briggs in flywheel section that includes the starter. But it had a separate starter section showing 2 starters, 1 same as flywheel section and then a 2nd being the standard 499521 with 16 tooth plastic. On the 15 steel it does say for steel ring only. So I go back to briggs and I see it also has this starter section with the 2 options.
So maybe it could have aluminum ring gear? But the IPLs only show steel? no wonder the wrong parts get put on.

[bgsengine]

303777-0332-02
At least that is what's on the shroud. Shroud says it was made for noma but it's in my elderly neighbour's poulan.

Whew brands rather convoluted... It started with , if I recall, Roper, then became American Yard Products which bought Weedeater (which bought Poulan) So Roper/AYP/Poulan/Weedeater which then were all bought by Electrolux AB , which finally became Husqvarna , split away to Husqvarna Outdoor Products (Husqvarna's consumer brands) Noma (Formerly Dynamark) was also purchased partly by AYP (and other parts by Murray Ohio which then became Briggs Outdoor) So, makes sense to see a Poulan listed as being for "Noma" (or AYP or Husqvarna) Also note I may have the "who bought what" order wrong (I remember when Dynamark, Roper, Noma, Murray, Poulan, Weedeater were all their own completely separate unrelated companies competing with each other...So, memories can get foggy over time.)

Her son said it was running wouldn't start. My first test had a very slow crank on dead battery and booster. I told him to charge/replace battery. He says he charged it and still not cranking good and burning and smoking. I tried with new battery, same thing ,flashes of light below starter. So I pulled starter which was standard with a plastic gear. So I put on an old used and it starts fine with his battery and verified charging works. So now I'm home looking up starter price and found ipl says it has steel flywheel, so I'm assuming starter gear should be steel. Ipl shows starter 691564.
https://www.bantasaw.com/catalog/viewpr ... ?i=&p=6681
Looks different than standard and gear kit is 496881.
https://www.bantasaw.com/catalog/viewpr ... ?i=&p=6680
I've never actually worked on a vanguard twin but I'm guessing it's safe to assume someone in the past put the wrong starter on it. I will slip over tomorrow with a magnet to make sure flywheel on it is indeed steel.

Magnet may not tell you much as the flywheel itself may be cast iron and thus can attract magnet through the aluminum (or plastic) - the real way to tell would be take a little file and file off a few shavings from the bottom surface (make a little bevel on a tooth perhaps) of the ring gear and then see if magnet will pick up all those filings. If it don't then you have aluminum ring gear. More often I'd simply stick a little inspection mirror under flywheel and look for the tell-tale rivets or screws that were used to hold aluminum or composite ring gear to the flywheel ( I believe steel ring gears were only a heat/press fit - frozen flywheel and ring gear heated with torch to put it on , much like ring gears were put on automotive flywheels)

Steel ring gear was not that common and I doubt you'd find one on a lower end consumer model rider... matter of fact I can probably count on one hand the number of steel ring gears on Briggs engines I have dealt with.... so I never even stocked the starter gear for the steel gear flywheels.. and only ordered new gears perhaps 2 or 3 times in 20 years.

Finally you say the starter works fine with the used gear you put on it - in that case you don't have steel ring gear - gear tooth counts are different for the steel gear vs the plastic gear, so you'd have almost immediately noticed the difference soon as you cranked it over. (which is why they say not to use that gear on steel ring gear flywheels in the first place)

[38racing]

most of the 31 and 33 I come across now have the steel and steel combo. My recollection is that Murray/Noma went to the chinese and then directly from there to Briggs.

[bgsengine]

Yeah Murray was at one time Murray-Ohio manufacturing co in the USA , they held on for years then Briggs bought the factory and tooling Brand may have gone to China at one point then brought back by Briggs.. Noma was initially AMF (They made sporting goods too, like bowling balls and stuff way back then) and sold under the Dynamark brand name I forget who bought them and rebadged the machines to Noma (And again I am talking USA based companies) Much like the Ryobi (and later MTD designs) were initally Inertia Dynamics corp (I was a Weedeater dealer right when Weedeater was bought / merged with Beaird-Poulan...and then bought by Emerson Electric, which also bought Roper and combined companies renamed to American Yard Products, before going to Electrolux Motor AB) and remember all the dealerships I knew being really upset at Central Tractor (Now Tractor Supply Co.) selling those throwaways (They were actually kinda the original throwaways - cost more to fix them even with a $15.99 retail short block kit than to just go buy a new 59.99 machine) - then they later morphed to Ryan (IDC Ryan) which then became Ryobi (and subsequently bought up by the Chinese) and even the new "modern" engines from MTD (which bought the tooling and I think the engine patents when IDC went kaput, but not the brand) were virtually identical (Indeed, you could fix new 2015 MTD models with an ancient 1989 model year IDC Ryan parts) Yeah the late 80's when I started were a time when a lot of OPE manufacturers were consolidating and merging up through the 1990's .. all that activity kinda slowed a little bit for a while, then major distributors started consolidating too (or shutting down) These days I really feel the OPE business as we used to know it (us old farts anyways) has a limited shelf life (and most of that type work going to smaller independent or hobbyist shops, unless they're in a big suburban region) you gotta be a "Heavyweight" (or have more money than sense) to really be a successful dealer (many places built up to own multiple stores) or have a thriving commercial market (big ticket stuff and/or they buy a dozen or more new handheld machines a year, etc)

But I'm not horribly surprised you may be seeing stuff these days that were a rarity for me. I've been out of the business completely for 3 years now and don't miss it one bit, but also my "current knowledge" is getting out of date quickly so I'm more likely to be useful to the guys like Creia that specialize in the Oldies or Restorations.. ( I could still tear down a Wheel Horse C-120 8 speed right down to the last bolt and put it all back together in my sleep, to factory specs or as close to it as the parts would allow and have it start right up and work like new... But that kinda skill and know-how really isn't very useful these days...)

[KE4AVB]

On top of that is now MTD hase been brought out by Black and Decker. Just plain getting confusing with IPLs to know whose to buy parts from.

An example is the Snapper rider and ztr here that I work on. They claim to be made by Briggs but are using Husqvarna parts. Enough to drive me bonkers.

[creia]

But I'm not horribly surprised you may be seeing stuff these days that were a rarity for me. I've been out of the business completely for 3 years now and don't miss it one bit, but also my "current knowledge" is getting out of date quickly so I'm more likely to be useful to the guys like Creia that specialize in the Oldies or Restorations.. ( I could still tear down a Wheel Horse C-120 8 speed right down to the last bolt and put it all back together in my sleep, to factory specs or as close to it as the parts would allow and have it start right up and work like new... But that kinda skill and know-how really isn't very useful these days...)

You most definitely are Brian for which I am most appreciative!
Michael