[Rev]

Originally Posted by Phillyfanfrombirth

Any chance that you bent the plate between the engine and transmission when you were replacing the starter? The "pinging" you're hearing could be a torque converter stud/nut hitting the bent plate...

It's painful for me to describe this, but I once did bend a flex plate by not alligning the drain plug on the torque convertor with the hole in the flex plate. What that meant was when I torqued down the studs holding the torque convertor to the flex plate it bent the flex plate big time. The car actually would start and run at low to normal rpms. When I ran it flat out at WOT the flex plate engaged the starter motor and fragged the teeth on the starter and flex plate. The way I determined that was to remove the inspection plate at the bottom of the bell housing and crank the engine. It was obvious that the flex plate had at least .5" of run out. Not what I wanted to see. I had to remove the tranny, get and install a new flex plate and convince AutoZone to give me a new starter. After all that was installed correctly with the drain cock lined up with the hole in the flex plate, all functioned well.

I just hope none of this little saga applies to you.

Rev