I just installed one of the Jegs brand mini starter. And it says to check the the gear to flywheel clearance. I usually do this when I have the engine out of the car, but I added the starter after everything was bolted up. I have a 4 speed in the car and the enclosed stock bell housing. It is a little hard to get in there to do this, any ideas?

 

I have a Jegs mini starter on mine. To be honest, I just bolted it on when I got it. It sounded fine. Its been working well for several years now.

 

Your car doesnt have this type of inspection plate ?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/231124972211?lpid=82

 

does it start?

 

Yes it looks like that.

 

New motor, I want to start it Friday or Saturday. I don't want to have problems with the starter while trying to get it running.

 

I had an issue with a jegs starter when I was putting my engine together. I did the checks that they entailed and the pinon was way too far away from the ring gear on the flywheel. I was only engaging halfway into the flywheel teeth. There was no way to bring the starter closer to the flywheel for deeper teeth engagement. I sent it back they sent me another and it was the same way. So I dumped that and went with a powermaster 9500. http://www.jegs.com/i/Powermaster/713/9500/10002/-1

With the belhousing on I don't see a way to adequately do the check. Its just too hard to see.

So on a followup starter install for an engine with a trans on it I put grease on my pinon and then picked the solenoid.

Remove the starter and looked for how much engagement I had via the "witness" mark in the grease on the pinion. This wont give you the backlash adjustment but it helps with depth of the pinion engagement.

This wont tell you if you are too close but it will let you know how far the pinion engaged into the flywheel ring gear. You can rough measure how far away the pinion is if you remove the 9500 starter motor from its mounting block and mount that to the engine and measure off its face to the flywheel and compare that to the distance with the mounting block on the starter. The 9500 has mounting assembly that allows you to infinitely clock the starter and it can be removed completely to allow you to measure depth to flywheel face from the mounting block when installed.

If the starter is laboring it could be too close as far as binding with no backlash and might need to be spaced away from the block with the spacers they provide.

The 9500 was spot on out of the box for me. I have a ram flywheel new block and new crank.

 

I installed a MSD mini starter and pulled the coil wire so I could just crank it to make sure it sounded okay, which it did. If it would have sounded off, I would have tried the shims.

 

MSD calls for a 1/2 to 2/3 pinion to flywheel engagement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3opHN1u9CCE#t=111

 

Probably not much of a help...

I bought a mini-starter from the GM Performance Parts Catalog. (Actually I got the part number and ordered it from a internet parts house.) I had some alignment information. It was for a GM small block. It was a ZZ4, but still the block was traditional small block external dimensions. I bolted it up and it worked just fine.

..Love the ministarter. Much smaller and lighter and seems to have all the power of the traditional large starter...actually I suspect it's more powerful. I bought the upsized ministarter for by 70 BB..see the GM Performance Parts Catalog.

The GM Performance Parts Catalog is really emotionally difficult to scan through...they've got so many really good things to buy..look at their engines..

 

Like with the grease above, it's probably just easier to check the gear pattern with paint. (like you do with the differential.) Paint, install, then remove the starter and check the pattern. Any water color paint will do.

Here is a pretty decent video that describes the process:

 

Put a battery in the car and cranked it over. Sounded fine. No need to check anything. Thanks for the help guys.