91-94 Starter upgrade to Gear Reduction

[billgraves]

Hello,
I searched thru starter drawings to find if the newer gear reduction Nose dementions were the same as older ones. They are for my application. I wanted a nose with a bearing and more output for higher compression.
1993 Sunbird 3.1L trans makes no difference as well as acc. The OEM starter has poor nose bushings. After looking thru allot of 60 deg starters I ordered one for a 2000-2005 Pontiac Grand AM or G6 or Chev 3.4L or 3.5L. This starter has a nut for the "S" terminal on the Solenoid. (The newer or later years have a single blade terminal which I did not want to convert to.) It is lighter and shorter width wise. It functions very good without any shims. I used the OEM bolts and it is a complete bolt in.
I did not care for the plastic fork in the OEM, although I had no failures. After 10k miles rebuild, the nose bushing wore again so the starter would drag slowing the RPM on the new bushings, brushes, Bendix, and solenoid replacement.
I did disassembled the New Starter from DB Electrical (SDR0189) finding it has a plastic fork and a plastic ring gear. There are no starters with metal parts as the ring gear or fork I could find.
I hope this will help someone.
Thanks

[neophile_17]

Sounds like you did a lot of homework- thanks for sharing! Somewhere along the way I read that I could get a starter out of a mid 2000s 3800. This has worked out well but did require shims. I don't know if the internal parts are any better but I've had no failures in the the last 10 years or so. Endurance racing means a lot of heat but not a lot of hours compared to a DD and our compression is stock.