Help - going on my 3rd Flywheel :(

[SSSammy]

Tom, just another view on why you have been busting teeth. From Tilton, I learned that the Lakewood BH/block plate/McLeod FW space the starter a little too far away and you don't get enough engagement pinion to flywheel. When that little pinion tries to spin that 482 with minimal tooth engagement, guess what? Different blocks and flywheels, ymmv.

On my Tilton SuperStarter, I measured the distance from the forward face of the block plate to the flywheel teeth, compared that to the Tilton spec, and determined that my pinion was falling short by .060". A call to Tilton confirmed that they knew this was an issue and they told me to have the starter housing machined down. I took the starter flange down to a local machine shop and had them turn it down .060" on a lathe. Just the outer rim, not the center boss. You don't change the diameter of the "registration ring", just the height of it. That put the pinion .060" deeper into the flywheel teeth.

Funny, they supply shims with the starter if you have too much engagement. What I needed was negative shim An un-shim ...

I can't say why you had a broken FW bolt. I don't know if that is related to this. Maybe it was defective, overtorqued, or if all of them were under-torqued then they will start to fail, like lug bolts on a wheel.

Good luck,
Sam