The solenoid was bad, got a clickety click but no starter energizer bunny action. I disassembled the starter to see how worn everything was. The brushes still had alot of meat, everything looked great. Turns out that the plate here was supposed to rub against the armature a little. Even took the solenoid apart with a parting bit in the lathe, sucks that you can't buy a solenoid that just unbolts for these starters cheap. The high amperage contacts were severly burned, would have just cleaned those up and put them back in, but the question of how to reassemble a non-disassemblable solenoid was never answered. The new solenoid works great, sucks I didn't take more pics of things while they were apart,I should have checked here before the starter went back in.

I would say that this Bosch starter is built rather differently compared to a Delco starter. Delco starters' armature is seperated from the endplate by a couple of metal washers, while a Bosch unit's armature is seperated from the endplate by the plate shown above with the brushes on it. The plus with the Bosch unit is that it's much easier to shim: endplate removal is not necessary on Bosch units to add or remove shims! Just remove an endcap that is over the brushes end's bushing, and the shims are right there, easily accessable. The Delco's brushes and commutator seem to not last as long; the GM 6.2 liter diesel's starter's brushes and armature wore out quickly before we bought a fancy new chinese gear-reduction unit.

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Got cars and bike:
1984 300D, 310K
2000 kawi ex500
1998 grand marquis, 125K