[chrs1961815]

The bendix spring is held in place by two bolts with special lockwashers. They have a tendency to eventually break with all of the torque that happens on the drive gear each time the starter is engaged. If they are not installed correctly, they will fall out. That happened to me two months ago. They are tricky to get out, what I did was stick a magnet on the flywheel and rotate it. If you drop a magnet in there - no big deal, the flywheel ring gear will pulverize it with no damage since it is hardened (which is also what I did).