After having to modify 3 starters by grinding on the mounting to give less clearance ,you know something is wrong on a cadillac.After all this replacing bad starters I have to say thats wrong!!With the OEM flywheel I never had to put shims on the engine to set more clearance. The flywheel I have on my engine is a pioneer made in mexico.While it looked like the original ,I did set it on the old one and it looked good but I didn't measure it. So yesterday I went online and started looking at flywheels sold at the parts stores. I didnt find any OEM's out there. Look at these listings at the stores.There is 3 different size diameters,seems that might be rather bad if you dont know about it. Any one know what the OEM diameter size is? Richard richie49
I have a nice stock 500 plate. It measures perfectly in between 13-7/8" and 13-15/16". The conversion would be 13.90625". The PRW plate that is SFI approved on the car is at least 1/16" larger although I never laid a tape measure on it. I did lay the two on top of each other and noticed the difference. The stocker got full tooth pattern contact when engaged and required the high torque mini starter to be shimmed about 0.035". The PRW requires about 0.050" shims but it only gets about 2/3 of the tooth contact on the flywheel. They are definitely different. When I pull the engine out (again) this fall to fix the rear main leak that won't go away, I'll probably put the stock plate back on it.
