97 Camry LE starter problems...thoughts?

[Agrippa]

I have a 97 Camry LE 4 cylinder with about 92k miles on it. I am the second owner and have had it for about 9k miles. Recently the car seems to have some problems starting. Here is what happens.

In the morning, or when the car has been sitting for a while, when I try to start it back up, I get a very high rpm motor sound like an electric razor - a sort of whirling sound like "weeeeeee". When that happens, I wait a second, and try and start it again and it almost always starts up like its new and when it doesn't, it will always start on the third try.

Now my hypothesis is that the starter motor is somehow just not making contact or pushing over to the flywheel for some reason. I'm guessing that I will need a new starter soon. What I want to know is:

1. how long until the starter completely poops out on me and wont engage the flywheel at all and
2. any advice on what starters I shoudl buy or stay away from? Im a poor student and I really have little disposable income right now. Are the autozone starters any good? Thanks.

[frenum49]

Pull the starter yourself and have a shop that rebuilds them go through it. Should run you somewhere near the $70 mark. Or tear it down yourself, and put a new bendix drive and solenoid in it for about $30.

[Mike Gerber]

I think your idea of the starter not engaging with the teeth on the flywheel is correct from your discription. Your problem could be in the starter's drive (hope for this) or the car's flywheel may be missing teeth (hope not). You may want to have someone (or yourself) pull the starter and then rotate the engine over by hand and inspect all the teeth on the flywheel.

Good luck.

Mike

[Agrippa]

I just ended up replacing the starter with a remanufactured one from autozone that has a lifetime warrenty. I dont think the starter that is on there now is the original one anyway and I really can't have the downtime of going and getting it rebuilt by someone.

Now that the starter is replaced, (which is a pain the the butt when I dont have a garage and its freezing cold outside) it starts fine on the first try. The teeth and everything else looked ok from the outside of my old starter. Im guessing whatever pushed the gear to make contact with the flywheel was on its way out.

Now if I can only get this 401 egr code to go out...

[new echo owner]

P0401 should be pretty simple task to fix, my bet would be on the EGR VSV stuck closed.

N.E.O.