starter engagement problem

[megaladon6]

when the starter pinion moves forward on the bendix drive it only engages half-way into the flexplate. is there anyway to lengthen the pinion shaft of move the starter towards the flexplate? i have a mini-starter with the solid mounting block on my '73 350 block and a 200r4 trans.

[Gordz32]

do you have any shims on the starter? Is your flexplate on backwards? What brand and model of starter is it?

[megaladon6]

i don't have shims on it, the problem isn't the vertical position of the starter, it's the horizontal. the flexplate is on correctly (IIRC i tried to do it backwards and couldn't.) the starter is generic aftermarket.

[MarkM66]

Does it grind or make noises?

[megaladon6]

it's nice and quiet now! of course it's out of the car. seriously though, it sounded normal up until a couple of days ago then it started to make noise and it was only a few more starts before the teeth were too chewed up. i just talked to a couple of starter places and they said it's a common problem with no fix. i am going to get the old pinion gear back and see if i can design/make something.
it may have just been that the engine kicked back while starting (stupidity caused timing problem) and that chewed up the gear leading to worse wear. i'll have to see.

[MarkM66]

I was going to say the same. I've seen them like that before, they only grab half of the teeth. Didn't seem right, but if it doesn't gring, and starts...

[BlueBull]

I had this problem for a while last year almost driven me crazy. I tryed to shim and replaced the starter gear 2-3 times and also the flexplate once. Happy with the result I was terrified when the problem started again after nearly a month with proper function.

I gave up and invested in a new starter. A good description of the adjustment (shimming) was included and afterwards I'm out of this problem. I have to say that the old starter sounded good and seemed to work properly, but now I'm glad it's on the junkyard.

I used a steel wire to make sure I had the adviced clearance.

[notagn]

U should check the block,I had too remove material from the area that mates at the block on the starter. There are aftermarket sellers that sell a measuring tool that goes in place of the started and will tell you what you need to to as far as ajustments.

[megaladon6]

the problem went away with the new gear, then came back, then went away and is now really bad. so i broke down and ordered a new flexplate and starter gear (just in case). i'm sure that the horizontal distance will be the same, but at least i'll have full teeth again.
are the billet steel gears any better/stronger than the regular steel ones? (at 4x the price, i hope so!) and is there a plate that has stronger teeth? (just in case this happens again)
i have the distance from the block correct now, when i first built the engine i couldn't figure out why it was too far away. i found out later that align honing can cause this. of course it was after i'd spent more money and gone nuts. what a surprise right.
thanks for the help, i'll let y'all know how it goes.

[megaladon6]

well i found part of the grinding problem. it's not so much the height of the pinion relative to the flexplate but the angle. i found that if i loosened up the bolts, the back of the starter dropped, and it engaged OK so i created a half shim and put that in to angle the starter. it's not perfect but it seems to be working most of the time.