M20 LOUD squeal on some cold starts (solved again)

[Swanny]

Could easily burn out your starter, or worse, cause an issue with the fly wheel. Would really get under there to check out what's going on. Spend a morning just cold cranking the engine to recreate the noise and hopefully you can catch what's going on

[peytonracer4]

How urgent is this....?

fairly. could damage the teeth on the flywheel. not really sure what causes it, but what is happening (assuming that's your problem) is the bendix gear is not disengaging fast enough. so the motor fires up and starts moving the flywheel quickly while the bendix is still touching the flywheel and it doesn't want to move that fast.

[Sea Aych]

Thanks all for the help with my original question! But here's another that popped up today (not related to actual starting of the engine though)

So i left work today and started up my car in the parking lot just fine (apart from the other cold idle issues i'm having), and then for a few minutes or about until the engine temp reached around the middle of the blue, whenever the car revved above 900rpm, in neutral AND in gear, it would make a horrible screeching/squealing sound that sounded like rubber on metal, but more screechy.

Eventually faded away after 500 metres, and came back one more time, but once the engine temp was above the blue, it never happened again. I've never had this issue.

One thing that can be noted though is that the alternator belt is almost done. I mean, i can see metal on some parts. It's most likely that - and i'll be replacing it this weekend, but i just wanted a second opinion if it could be something else/worse.
Thanks!

[AndrewBird]

That sounds like the starer pinion is not disengaging from the flex plate and the engine is spinning it faster than normal until it finally disengages. Definitely not a belt sound.

[Sea Aych]

EDIT: found an e46 video with the exact noise - turns out its the starter. Will replace...again
Thanks again NitroRustlerDriver