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Which starter motor for my car?

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Mattrix:
Strangely, this one didn't come with shims. Bit ticked off about that fact, because nearly all the other ones on ebay do. I've tried bolting it in with some metal spacers however they aren't doing the job that a shim would, from what I can tell. I'm going to pull it out and see if it meshes up with my old starter. If it does, I'll have to work out a way of shimming it properly. If not, then I have no idea what to do because I obviously won't be able to get my money back :(

Mattrix:
So, I got it running!
And rather than take it to someone that knows what they're doing, I decided to work it out myself in an effort to becoming one of those someones.
Basically, I worked out that there are 2 main places you can shim a starter motor. You can shim it between the starter and the block, or you can shim it between the bolt heads and the starter. I was shimming it between the starter and the block, and it just never made enough of a difference. As I was pulling the starter off to try something else, I dropped one of my makeshift shims into the bellhousing. So, I pulled the bellhousing off (realising then that I should've done that before I did anything else, right at the start!). Then I put the starter on with the bolts and no shims, and looked at how it sat when positioned normally. It appeared to be ok, so I decided to bolt it up properly and then watch it run with the bellhousing off. What I found was that it was jumping around on the bolts. It turns out that the bolts would be tightly screwed in, but because this starter motor is a bit more shallow than my other one, the starter still had a tiny bit of play. So, I put shims between the bolt heads and the starter motor, and bolted it in. No play, so that was a good start. I then went to start it, and it was misbehaving. I figured it was a battery issue (ran it down too far, trying to start the thing all the time), even though the volt meter said it was ok, I decided I should charge the battery up anyway. So, after charging, dumped it in, turned the key, and it roared to life!
So there you go, something I wouldn't have even thought could be an issue, but now that I've fixed it I feel more educated, ready to tackle the next problem the car throws at me :)

Reklaw:
Well done Matt. So, in a nutshell, the bolts were too long for that starter, they were "bottoming out" so although they were tight, the starter wasn't being tightened to the block.
:pepper:

gtc:
Glad you got it sorted. Enjoy the fast starts!

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