Posted by chriscase on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 10:27:20 :
In Reply to: Re: where to find starter shim? posted by Don in Missouri on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 09:37:18 :
There should be a collar on the end of the shaft that retains the bendix from moving out too far. The ring has an inner groove that faces out. You put it on after the drive, followed by a wire snap ring that fits into a groove in the shaft. Then you have to snap the collar up over the wire ring using 2 pairs of pliers. The starter on my M1009 diesel blazer did this, I found the broken collar in the bottom of the dust cover. The gear was acting like a milling cutter inside the nose cone.
To re-iterate, the drive should not hit the inside of the nose piece of the starter. It should have collar there to limit it's motion. Perhaps a washer there would give you bettter limitation? But make sure the switch still works, you could limit ot tooo much.
The local rebuilding shop sold me a new collar and snap ring for $5.