4EAT - Will the car start with a broken torque converter?

[jton]

Driving home on the highway the other day - CEL came on w/ the cruise control light flashing. Car drove fine but I pulled over, turned off the car and checked fluids etc and it was ok.

 

Car idled perfectly while in Park but would make a chattering noise when put into Drive. Since I was only 3 miles from home I decided to make the trip home since it was driving fine - no vibrations etc.

 

About 1 mile from home - going 65mph - the RPM's jumped to 4.5k from 3k but there was no speed increase or gear shift. The car started slipping when given too much torque. I made if off the highway but everytime I gave it too much gas the car would slip (like it had a bad clutch).

 

Got home and and I shut her down. After that the car will not start. Makes w whirring sound - like the starter is spinning but is not making contact w/ anything. Checked the codes and it was misfire on all 4 cylinders. Looked it up in the book and all arrows point to the torque converter.

 

 

What are your thoughts?

[FLlegacy]

I am assuming the torque converter has the ring gear for the starter on it (never seen the subie one but hondas do). If somehow the bolts holding the flexplate to the TC came loose or broke I could see this causing your problem, but I am not really seeing in my experience where a broken TC would not still start the car. The engine to TC connection would have to be broken to allow this. Easiest way to check would be to remove the starter and try turning the TC by hand and see what happens.

[jton]

Thanks FL. Yea there is a ring gear for the starter on the TC in the subie. Hopefully after this heat wave passes I can actually do some work on this bitch. Car was slipping like crazy - reminded me of the day my clutch finally died on my celica. Will have to try turning the crank on the engine to see if its still attached to the TC after pulling the starter.