the flex plate eater, aka my junkyard 454

[trkklr77]

well some of you know of my ongoing problems with my motor killing flex plates, now its killed my brand new starter, piece of sh!t.

the f/p it came with was chewed and but it worked fine when i tried it, for a while, put a new f/p on and eat it up then it started working fine and now its bald and my new starter nose cone looks like a spiders web. so i bust out the flash light and monkey fawker!!! the outer edge of the block is breaking off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! through the center of the outer starter bolt hole and going up. its a very very suttle crack and very very very easy to miss, the bolt still has full engagement and isnt stripped or stripping. now im trying to figure out if i did it or if was why the donor truck got tossed.

my buddy says he can fix it, so im crossing my fingers and pulling it out of the short truck.

:beer: heres to a giant step back wards in my build a big kick in the nuts.

[boogie67]

I had a 283 that was cracked like that.It kept tearing up my pressure plates.I put an auto trans behind it and it kept tearing up my flywheel.We had it weilded but we finally gave up on it.

[71chevytruckguy]

don't have the timing advance too far do you? we had the same a project car at school that had a bbc in it a tore up a starter every tim you started it. turned out the timing was advanced too far and it was back firing everytime your tried starting it. chris.

[jeffspower]

Make sure it has the brush-end support bracket. I don't know all the years that had them, but I have put many of them on over the years to help in similar situations. The last one I done was several years ago. At that time, the bracket was available from GM for a few bucks. I think we looked up a 454 in a '88-up pickup to get a part number. When you get it all back together- leave the flywheel cover off & paint the "drive" side of the teeth on the ring gear. Crank it over with the coil unplugged and look at the pattern it made. These old GM starters are noted for not fully extending the drive when cranking, ending up with only partial engagement in the ring gear teeth. Parts store rebuilt starters can be a luck of the draw in getting a good one. If this is suspected, have someone crank on it while you watch it. If it does extend ok, is the paint on the teeth showing full engagement? If not, your starter may be crooked to the centerline of the crankshaft. That can happen if the crack in your bolt hole allows some flex while cranking. Thats where the extra support bracket will help. And as mentioned in the previous post,advanced timing and/or high compression can cause problems. Also, if all appears ok, here's a rule of thumb to go by on shimming:

Too tight will not be noisy while cranking, but will make a shrill "zziirrpp" once the engine fires up.

Too loose will be noisy while cranking. I've had plenty of them over the years that were too loose with no shims. Try another starter if this happens. The tolerances on machining the nose cone can vary greatly from one to the other.

Good luck!

[Slammed70]

You got the starter shimmed right....remember, depending on the year of the motor its either a 158 or a 162 tooth flywheel. The starters will interchange on them and work....but will destroy one another after a while. And beleive it or not, theres a different between the bendixes on the SB/BB starters. Make sure you got a BB starter and not a SB starter.

[crazy longhorn]

Originally Posted by Slammed70

You got the starter shimmed right....remember, depending on the year of the motor its either a 158 or a 162 tooth flywheel. The starters will interchange on them and work....but will destroy one another after a while. And beleive it or not, theres a different between the bendixes on the SB/BB starters. Make sure you got a BB starter and not a SB starter.

153, or 168 on the tooth count, & the starters WILL NOT interchange & work with the wrong flywheel. The only way to do the interchange is by swapping the nose of the starter according to which flexplate you have. Gm had some issues on starters.....IIRC, the bottom of the block was not machined properly, so the nose of the starters were machined to fix the problem. This worked fine till you swapped the starter out, & did not have the proper clearance (armature shaft to flywheel OD). That clearance needs to be 1/8", & I have seen many chevys take shim under the outside corner of the starter ONLY, to tighten the clearance. Too loose, shim the outer corner......too tight, shim under both bolts. Also as mentioned, dont for get the front starter brace, & make sure the bolts are not bent. Another thought on the crack on the starter mount......you can always go stick shift, the starter bolts to the bell on these old trucks best of luck, L

[trkklr77]

both starters i have were "tweaked"' off in the same dirrection. the support bracket is a vertical single bolt bracket, it will hold the end from going up and down but not horizontaly like it need.

the teeth had full ingagement, its striped all the way across.

the pn for the starter that came with it checked out as a sbc, the one i got was for a bbc. when i asked if there was any differences ina sbc/bbc starter everyone said not on the nose, just a bigger body.

the flexplates are all 168s, i counted. the mini starter i borrowed, had both mounting holes[153/168 ] and ingaged perfectly, but the sinlinoid either hit the block or the header pipe.

right now the timing is 8* btdc, it was at 4* atdc when i did the intail time.

i have always heard about people haveing to shim starters but i have never had to. i started slipping half shims in it and all it did was make it worse.

the bendex for the bbc is supposed to be a 9 tooth and thats what they both were.



i would love to go manual but the trannies i want are all block mount bell housings. t56,nv4500, any other 5speed that is not going to implode on the first clutch dump.

[soulman67]

I have a similar problem with my 6.5 diesel but it is from a starter bolt broke off in the block. The bracket will hold the starter from swinging out horizontaly. I went through starters pretty fast for a while. Then I used some slick wire wraped around a bellhousing bolt then looped through the long bolts that hold the starter together. This worked for me cause the outside bolt was the one that broke. I just had to tighten every thing up regularly.

Also check the angle of which the starter is engaging the flywheel if you starter is shifting while cranking it will ware the teeth smooth down I have this problem gitting it straight is a pain for me cause of the missing bolt. If you block is cracked at the starter hole it might have the starter cocked at an angle to the flywheel causing your problems.

[lilpup69chevy]

i went through 7 flywheels on my 93 gmc couldn't figure it out starter was fine and shimmed right, once i had the transmission rebuilt it stopped, wierd i don't know if that would be a problem or not almost sounds like the starter isn't shimmed right?