Safety first - disconnect the battery.
First you need to get under the car and remove the electrical connections from the starter.
Then undo the first bolt marked in red it is in a bit of a hard place to get to with a socket and the other one is on the other side of the cross member.
The starter motor should then come out with a little bit of jiggling. .
Once you have it out the best thing to do would be to give it a good clean as it just make it easier.
Now it’s out and clean you need to take it apart and see what’s going on inside.
Undo the screws and bolts shown and the rest of it can just be pulled apart.
So here is the inside I marked the location of all the bushes with a red dot and as you can see two of them are gone and i only have one good one left. You can go down to any good spare parts store and pick up some new bushes for a maximum of $20 mine cost $12, (oh and don’t bother with Mitsubishi or at least the one near me as apparently Mitsubishi have never made an FTO lol)
Take out the old bushes and give the inside of the starter a clean the new bushes will need to be soldered into place. If you continue to dismantle the starter you will find three little gears and while you are here you might as well give them a bit of grease, just put everything back together and you’re done just do what I have shown you in reverse to get it back in.
So for the cost of $12 you just saved your starter and that’s pretty good as the cheapest one I could find online was about $130.
