[Paul Merolla]

Also, don't count out the possibility that the starter gear could be too far away from the ring gear. I ran into that on my street car - for years, it sounded like a cat got its tail stuck in there, but no amount of shimming would cure it. I finally got fed up and took a good hard look...only the ends of the teeth were meshing. Ended up filing down the aluminum on the starter. Sounds great now.