08beatersilvo

I fixed it. Bought an aftermarket starter off ebay for $80 that worked perfectly with no shimming or extra work. Returned the $240 one to O'reilly's and told them it was defective.

I have a rusty 08 silverado 1500 4.3 v6 wt that I use as a beater work truck. The starter recently died so I swapped in a new one from Oreilly's. The old starter had no spacers and the new one didn't come with any either. The gear on the new starter clearly doesn't line up properly and it sort of worked but I could hear some grinding. I spent 6+ hours playing with different washer stacks and thicknesses and some paint to view how the gears were meshing and came up with a configuration that works better than nothing, but it's still grinding a little bit. Any ideas what I can do? Someone told me that different VIN numbers of this truck model actually take very slightly different size starters. Could it be as simple as getting a different part? I'm kind of at my wits end with this one.