Recently started having problems with starter motor and yesterday it finally died. So today I've pulled it out to have a look. To be fair the fly wheel and housing at the end of the starter looked fairly clean. I removed the end cap (bush end) and found all the gunk in pics. I'm guessing this is cause of the failure but is it due to the DMF or the fact I have an oil leak which has covered the starter over time ??

certainly looks like it could be, though if the rest of the car is behaving, it could be something as simple as the leftovers from a previous replacement

Ok that makes sense, I have records of DMF being done in past but nothing on the starter. Fingers crossed it's never been changed and I don't have to worry for now lol

i would worry more about dermatitus from those mucky hands.lol

Yeah I recon that could be it ad the cack is black fresh iron would be more shiny so that's my basis for thinking it's not it's time to go.

Sounding good then :-) I forgot, I took a pic of the fly wheel when it was apart. Looking at this, does it look Ok ??

Looks clean and shiny, doesn't look like anything has started to flake off, from the glimpse we see that looks to be in fine order

Ok that sounds gud. I will take a pic of the housing 2moro of the old starter. It looked too me as if there was minimal crud inside but will post pic. To be fair I called green flag out at the time an the matie beat the hell out of the starter, he prob loosened the crud an killed it lol. But I had suspected it to be prob anyway :-/

You're not seeing the bit of the flywheel that causes the problem. The filings come from the heads of rivets being worn away on the back of the flywheel. There's no way you can get a look at this without taking the flywheel off.