I have a 96 Celebrity 22' Cuddy with a Merc 350I/O ever since I bought the boat last year it has had some starter issues. It knocked teeth off the flywheel to the point it wont start at all now so I pulled the engine to replace the ring gear on the flywheeel and replace the starter. Now here is where Im running into problems, the book according to the engine serial # calls for a merc PN806963A4 Starter straight across bolt pattern one long bolt one short bolt, but my engine has a 14" flywheel and does not allow the starter to even mount. Im assuming that there may have been an engine swap somewhere along the line maybe from a bigblock to a small block where they transfered the flywheel over to the small block and thats whats causing my problems.... So is it possible to use the 14" flywheel and which starter would I need ? The block will except either straight across pattern or diagonal pattern for the starter.
TIA Jeff
TIA Jeff