ORIGINAL: TREADSTONE
..It says that when the engine was started the motor failed to disengage...which placed undue thrust on the main shaft....which defeated the pre-load on the main bearing..
ORIGINAL: Gaspar
..Supposing that the engine can arrive to idle with the starter engaged....that is a lot of supposition... Let me know what starter you use that can survive 4 minutes at 150Krpm. And the ecu should have survived 4 minutes at 50V of back EMF... that's reliability! Not many appliances allow a voltage 7 times higher than nominal...
And the suposition that a starter shaft (a fault outside the engine, again [&o] ) with his tiny 2mm of diameter can upset the preload and damage the bearings is ridiculous, sorry. No way that it can hold full 4 minutes and do enough force to upset the preload... and this force should be against the engine, just inversely as the sense of the bendix...
so i was right then
quoted from page 1 of this thread
'2: Starter motor bendix shaft has a fault and fails to disengage from the compressor........which would cause:
starter motor goes over speed and acts like a generator overloading ECU, preload overload and rear bearing skids causing rear bearing failure and the starter goes too fast and fries it's bearings. '