Starter issue?

So far's I'm concerned, ALL stamped steel bells are "suspect" for QC and precision. I dearly hope you performed a bell housing alignment.

In the mid 70's two friends of mine bought Lakewood bells for Jeep swaps. One was an amazingly dangerous Chev 350 in what had been a brand new '74-75 CJ-5, and the other was a Stock 70's CJ manufactured with the Buick V6. Both guys bought these bells pre-drilled for a Ford top loader to be adapted to a Jeep transfer case.

The Buick bell, which was checked for concentric, turned out to have the Ford bolt pattern ROTATED enough that the transfer case hung down "noticably"!!!

The Chev 350, also to a Ford top loader, was also out of line and as I recall, the offset dowels were really not enough to fully compensate.

This obviously was way before the internet, and I was less than impressed

Both these guys were excellent bodymen, painters, and mechanics, and one worked for the other, who owned a very well received bodyshop at the time. I certainly cannot fault their expertise with these installations.