Im looking for a replacement starter for my 1990 d58p. The one i currently have is already a replacement unit, done by a previous owner, so i dont know what the original looked like The ones im finding look a bit different than the one i have, they have a cup surrounding the bendix gear, supporting it from the outter edge. On mine the bendix is floating, only having support from the main shaft. The listing i saw claims to fit my machine, but says it has 12 teeth, my current starter has 10...will this work on my machine?
It may or may not work. I see you are saying the one in it, is a replacement by a previous owner. He may not have the correct starter on the engine and the ones you have been finding are the correct ones. Here is my experience with the same situation. I have Case backhoe and when I purchased it, the starter sounded very labored when I would start it. I did a complete engine overhaul and replaced the flywheel ring-gear and had the starter rebuilt. The old ring-gear was about to fail. The first time I started the the engine the starter would hardly turn it over. The fourth time I started it, the starter locked into the the ring-gear. It did some serious damage to the new ring-gear. With the help of a very knowledgeable parts man we determined that the previous owner had replaced the starter drive with one that had one less tooth than the factory original. I had to remove the shuttle, four speed transmission, bell-housing and flywheel and put in another new ring-gear. The machine had been starting for long time with the mismatched gears , but it was a small amount of time before I was going to be somewhere and have a complete starting failure. Sorry this is such a long-winded reply, but I cannot stress the fact enough that you need to be very careful in your replacement starter. Be sure to look in the starter mounting hole and check those ring-gear teeth. Turn the engine with a bar through that same hole. Be sure the engine cannot start first.