Starter to flexplate....how much gear contact???

I have a Chevy 400 that has a ruined flexplate. It seems that the starter gear, when engaged, only contacts about the first 1/2 of the teeth on the flexplate. I am NOT talking about mesh. I am talking about the slide into the teeth. There is a bushing with retaining ring on the shaft of the starter that prevents it from going any further. I went in and removed this so the gear can slide farther forward, now to hit the starter housing. It did not work because the solenoid does not throw the gear THAT far forward.

Now, I have to replace the flexplate, but I do not want this problem again. Has anyone heard of this as a problem, and is there a fix? I have not tried a new starter because there is nothing wrong (?) with this one. I guess I should check if I can return a new starter if it lines up the same way. The flexplate actually seems a bit too far away from the crank, which is adding to this problem....but that is the way it is mounted to the crankshaft, so there is nothing you can do there.

The only thing I can think to do is to go back into the starter, and mess with the solenoid fork to make it start more forward to begin with, so when I hit it, it will go all the way forward.

Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks

are you sure that you didn't put the flywheel on backwards?

Good question....actually, this is a 1978 Chevy 400 that looks like the flywheel has never been off.

What it looks like happened is that over time, the starter was engaging less and less, till it was only going about half way across the flywheel. After some recent work on the bottom end (flywheel was not removed), trying to start it under much heavier compression caused the starter to chip some teeth off the flywheel.

I have now removed the tranny, replaced the flywheel, have bought a new starter (reman), but need to finish r&r the driver side exhaust manifold bolts PITA!!!!!