Starter is starting to tick me off!

[krue]

I have been having starter problems with this truck since I bought it. I have broken the shaft, cracked a nose cone, wore the bushing out of the end of another nose cone, replaced the flexplate twice and still having problems!

I think my block's mounting pad for the starter is not machined correctly and it is mounting the starter too far from the flexplate which lets the gears clash and bind. I shimmed the outer bolt with an 1/8th thick washer and it quit making racket, until this morning when it started again. My question is can I grind the snot out of the nosecone and get the gears lined up that way? Or am I going to have to buy a "special" nosecone to fix the misalignment?

Thanks, Krue