300 Utility Starter Advice

[u00bgg2]

Hello, I have a had 300 utility for the past several years, fixing little issues as they come around. Well I am getting ready to give the tractor to my son and wanted to fix some of the more problematic items.
When I purchased the starter ground pretty bad, a little hit miss but i could always get it to catch. I replaced the gear on the starter with a new version of the old design, seemed to be a little better but was not right. So I split the tractor as I could see the ring gear is a little chewed up.
Once I got it apart I was surprised that there is no section of the gear with teeth missing, all of them are pretty evenly chewed up like the starter gear is only engaging 1/3 to 1/4 of the way in.
I have been reading up on this and many are suggesting to replace the original design with the updated design, thoughts on this?
I expected teeth to be missing, when the starter misses and does not catch I simply got off the tractor, grabbed the fan blade and turned the motor over a little to get it past the bad area so I expected so serious teeth missing.
I have read and there does not appear any adjustment for the starter (in or out) as factor so I can only believe the bendix is not coming out far enough.
I took the attached pictures show the gear in retracted position, then extended, with the last one being me squeezing it all the way out, which there was a lot of pressure.

Thank you,
Brian

 

[u00bgg2]

sorry for some of the double pictures in the post, my bad

 

[Janicholson]

From the first images it appears to be traveling (ow was) about right, The new style starter drive is far better, This site sells them for a reasonable price.
The only issue with the old ring gear is that the teeth are not worn in only two places, but almost evenly chewed up. 4 cylinder engines almost always stop in
two places, and these are where the entry wear is usually found. Jim

 

[Paul in MN]

Your ring gear looks to have fairly normal wear, especially if the tractor has been converted to 12 V. When converted to 12 V, the starter drive hits harder on the ring gear. As you already have a new ring gear (in pictures), just put it on and all should be well. When installing the gear on the flywheel, do not get it red hot, as that can destroy the gear tooth hardness. Notice the blue color of the new teeth, that is from the hardening process. Usually a ring gear will be large enough to fit the flywheel when heated to ~ 500 F. You can take the old one off with a torch, as you don't care about what happens to it's hardness.

Paul in MN

 

[caterpillar guy]

Could have just flipped the ring gear around and used the back side. I do that all the time on them.

 

[u00bgg2]

I did think about flipping the gear but based on how it was acting I "thought" there was more sever wear than what I found. Lesson learned I guess