I replaced my starter with a new one about three years ago. Yesterday my son called me from the boat "Dad it won't start, what do I do?" That causes me great pain since on top of being a mechanical moron, it's hard to fix things over the phone.
We have a voltmeter in the boat and the battery was fine. He explained that there was sometimes just a click from the 50 amp breaker, but when I told him to just reset the button it didn't help. Sometime it made a sound like "rattling marbles in a can". I remembered something about a bendix from my youth, and I told him to gently tap the starter with a hammer. It started and worked all day.
Am I a genius, or just lucky? and do I have to replace the starter again?