[kmauldin]

If I left that bolt out, it would be my luck that one of the other one's would break and the starter would fall out while I'm going down the highway. I'm not debunking what anyone thinks, but I tend to believe the automakers pay a lot of money to engineers who design and plan how this stuff should go together and if they designed it with 3 bolts, it should have 3 bolts. That bolt on top of the starter will certainly take years off your life though!