[dmjlambert]

I saw a video on youtube where a guy painted a few teeth of the starter's teeth with white paint prior to installing the starter. Then after starting the truck a few times he took the starter off and looked at the paint to see the amount of shimming needed. He was looking for the paint to be scraped off about 2/3 the way down into the starter gear teeth. If less paint was missing, add shims on the outer mount bolt, and if too much paint was missing, add shims across both mount bolts. I thought it was interesting. This was on a starter type that was too inconvenient to pull the starter gear out to mesh with the flexplate.