383 eating starters

[Zapan00]

I've had my car back from the shop (after over a year there) for two weeks now and it has eaten 3 high torque starters in that time frame. The one that was on the car when it got shipped to me from the shop died starting it to get it off the truck.

It looked to me like there were too many shims in it, causing the starter gear to engage too shallow resuming in a horrible grinding noise and failure to start. I've since installed 2 starters on my own with what I think is proper spacing but after a week of every day starting and driving I start hearing the horrible grind, followed shortly by the starter no longer engaging. I've tried the huge old starters as well as a starter from a 1998 350.

The car has a 383 stroked and a 700 r4 trans. I'm not sure of the gear count on the flywheel but it uses the offset bolt pattern for the starter. Any suggestions to fix the issue would be helpful.

I refuse to call the guy who worked on the car to find out anything since he lied/ stretched the truth about nearly everything he did on the car.

Thanks

[Ron in SoCal]

Zap - I had a simialr problem that went on for a looong time and a lot of $$$. After many starters/flywheels, we pulled the engine, took it to the machine shop who buith the brute and he finally mic'd the engagement and modified the starter case 40/1000's and documented it for me so that if it ever broke I caould repeat the process. Theories aboud as to why this happened - bad line bore (nope), bad block (possibly but it was a new Dart Big M block), bad crank (possibly, but the thing balanced out ok and ran smooth at high r's). To this day I really don't care what it was, but I don't talk to the idiots who charged me 'not' to fix the problem...

[Vegas69]

Most people(Even Mechanics) don't realize you have two measurements that need to be right for propery starter function.

1. The gap between the starter and flywheel gear must be measured with pin gauges. I don't remember the spec but I could look it up. To increase the gap, you put shims between the starter and engine block.

2. Starter gear nose to flywheel distance. This one gets alot of guys. Your starter needs to be in the sweet spot so your gear has room to move and mesh with the flywheel. To close and it won't engage all the time and grinds. To far away and you have inadequate engagement. Nose shims are available for change this distance. If they are both on the money, you should enjoy a long starter life and no nooise.

[BBC69Camaro]

Tilton has a nice set of instructions and diagrams explaining what Todd is talking about:

Pinion to ring gear spacing
Ring gear backlash
http://www.tiltonracing.com/ins/98-095.pdf