72-up AMC six starter woes

carnuck wrote: Wrambler wrote: Autolite was still putting out new starters a year or two ago for newer stuff. I have one in my 97 XJ and it is flawless. The Autolite reman starters and new weren't the original company, but a Chinese knock off (I used to work for Schucks and had to listen to customer rants a LOT for that)

  I never said it wasn't made in China. Though one could take it that way?
All I know is the rebuilt one I bought was utter garbage, the brush setup I bought to rebuild the original was utter garbage.
  The Autolite was NEW and has been on the Jeep well over 2 years now, China or not it works. The others did not.

Wrambler wrote: Autolite was still putting out new starters a year or two ago for newer stuff. I have one in my 97 XJ and it is flawless. Tom, you can probably rebuild that starter better then anything you get off a parts store shelf. Otherwise get it to billD. The biggest issue I ever saw, and I mean ever was the nose bushing being shot. I've fixed $10 starters from a core barrel by replacing the nose bushing.   I've never seen a shim being needed either. I'm still running an old non rebuilt starter in my American and would not hesitate to replace bushings or brushes and springs, way to easy a fix 99% of the time.

The Autolite reman starters and new weren't the original company, but a Chinese knock off (I used to work for Schucks and had to listen to customer rants a LOT for that)

Autolite was still putting out new starters a year or two ago for newer stuff. I have one in my 97 XJ and it is flawless.

Tom, you can probably rebuild that starter better then anything you get off a parts store shelf.
Otherwise get it to billD.

The biggest issue I ever saw, and I mean ever was the nose bushing being shot.
I've fixed $10 starters from a core barrel by replacing the nose bushing.
 
I've never seen a shim being needed either.

I'm still running an old non rebuilt starter in my American and would not hesitate to replace bushings or brushes and springs, way to easy a fix 99% of the time.

I agree, swapping the flexplate just to fix a starter issue is a pain. There are other advantages to using the 4.0L starter -- it's much smaller as well as readily available for the next 20+ years. Availability of good 70s AMC starters is the main issue, isn't it? If you can get a real good one now it should last 20+ years though. 

switch flexplate to fix a starter problem? nahh, rather pay $250 for a starter! :-)

I'm not a 'swap parts til it works' person unless the swap is trivial and likely to reveal an answer. The flex plate was inspected as good (not that it's impossible I missed something). The rebuilds even LOOK bad (previous one has a weird bolt-on extention to the battery connection cuz the OEM was broken).