Took off the Starter and....

The flywheel looks chewed up around the front edge. As for the starter It's pretty rough the nosecone is chipped, and the bushing is just about gone. It's an 87 4.2 manual. I'm hoping the new starter will sit deeper inside and engage the flywheel better so i can avoid dropping the tranny on back. Anyone have any suggestions for this issue?

The new starter from NAPA is going on tomorrow. I will take some pics of the old starter and flywheel when i make the exchange. Is the Mean green starter worth the price? I don't do a whole lot of offroading just the occasional surf fishing trip.

Ok we took off the old starter, cranked the engine over manually to see just how bad the flywheel was, and it had a pretty rough spot.. So we decided to put on the new starter fired her up, and She cranked but sounded terrible. Then we took the starter back off and looked at the gears. looked like the starter gear was sitting too deeply into the flywheel. So we drove back to Napa.. (Anyone who can get a job done with 1 trip is my hero!) We decided to get not 1 but 2 shims for the starter. Seems like that did the trick with some minor excess noise coming from the starter motor.. Kind of like a wheezing sound at the very end of ignition. Took some pics of the flywheel and old starter. I will post them up as soon as i figure that out.