I am building a BBC see the other post about a BBC in a Jet Boat. I got a SFI flexplate (163 tooth) and a mini hi torque starter from summit. I have it all set up on my engine stand. When I put the flexplate on, the orientation was hard to fiqure out. We put the starter on and manually pulled the starter "bendix gear" out to see ring gear and sarter engagement. It lined up with full gear to gear engagement. We checked the spacing with the old paper clip trick and had about .060. So we did not put a shim in it. Fast forward: we got the motor on the run in stand and all wired. I bumped the starter button and noticed a lot of tiny chips of paint flying off of the flywheel starter area and also the starter gear did not retract. I did not have the dist. in so it did not start. I had to manually push the starter gear back into its home. I am now wondering if I have it on backwards but I doubt it. I think I might need a shim only on one side of the starter that would be closer to the oil pan side. Help I want to fire this thing but do not want the starter gear to grind the new flexplate. I will have other things to worry about when breaking in the camshaft. The flexplate has a little indentation on it is installed so that the indentation part is on the crank side. Picture a cereal bowl, well the outside bottom of the bowl would be on the transmission side and the inside of the bowl would be on the crank side. Is this correct.
Thanks.
T.J.
www.tjsperformance.com