I drove the 2a to vote on Saturday. This involved wading through about 60cm water.

Yesterday the starter stopped engaging. So off comes the starter.

As I suspected, the spiral on the Bendix drive was rusty. So I cleaned it, wire brushed it, washed it in turps, dried it with compressed air, and thoroughly coated it with powdered graphite.

Removing or replacing the starter is possible without removing the exhaust pipe, but you have to hold it exactly right to get it through the space defined by the crankcase, flywheel housing, chassis and exhaust pipe - and hold you mouth right. I wonder if this is why they had the exhaust coming up from the manifold on the early versions of this engine?

Now to find a wading plug.