Smoking from the tranny hole?? Starter toast?

[fahrvergnugen at cox.net (David Utley)]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Toomasson" <area53@validpath.com>
To: <scirocco-l@scirocco.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 12:56 AM
Subject: Smoking from the tranny hole?? Starter toast?


> gawd - that intro could be twisted several ways...  :D
>
> Anyway, I sure many of you have had the symptom where you're cranking and
> cranking and cranking (though I really only remember having this happen on
a
> mk1...) and then it feels like the starter's being choked ->  "rrrrtt,
> rrrtttt"  (it's terrible trying to phoneticize (is that even a word?) a
sounds
> that the car is making....)
>
> Well after several rounds of cranking, I notice smoke coming from the
tranny
> plug hole. At first, my mind went to the clutch, but the PO supposed
installed
> a new one right before I bought it (couldn't be more than 1000 miles on
it).
> And mechanically it doesn't make a lot of sense. Another few rounds of
> cranking finally brought on what sounded like a gnawing of gears.  I gave
up
> because I had to get ready to spend the afternoon w/ the family.
>
> Does anybody have a similar experience where it _wasn't_ the starter?  I
have
> a small window to work on cars tomorrow and I'd much prefer to install my
> CD/mp3 player into the M5 rather than troubleshoot this only to find out
it
> much more than just the starter...
>
> Hope everyone's having a good weekend!
>
> Thx, JT

An old mechanic friend of mine told me that I should never run the starter
for more than 10 seconds at any one time, and I shouldn't really run it more
often than every thirty.  I don't know how true it is, but I don't seem to
have much trouble this way.  Starters aren't designed to run constantly,
that much is certain.  If anything, I would bet you that you burned off some
of the oil that has prolly built up in the starter itself, and or cooked the
solenoid as someone already mentioned...

Does it work at all now?

David