Put a new flywheel in my 97 Blazer and now the starter makes a grinding and clunking noise. It did not do it with the old flywheel. Any idea

 

Did you match up the new and old flywheels to make sure they were identical in terms of # of teeth as well as offsets? Also, did you install it in the same orientation as the original (in terms of front/back orientation)?

 

The flywheel is the same, 168 teeth. It is also installed correctly. I have put them in before and never had this problem. There is only 1 flywheel for this vehicle

 

You may just have to shim the starter to get it to mesh correctly then...

 

I tried 3 sizes of shims and it made no difference. I also replaced the starter and that made no difference. Any other idea would be a great help.

 

Other than what I originally mentioned, there really aren't many more things it could be. I believe there are different offsets in the flex plate so if it is installed backwards, it would result in the ring gear being out of position.

You could measure from the center of the starter bolt hole closest to the bell housing back to the back of the ring gear (side closest to the transmission), then compare that measurement to the same bolt hole on the starter out to where the bendix moves the drive gear to (manually extending the bendix). These measurements should end up being equal.

If that checks out, then the flex plate may not be the proper size (tooth count)...

I know you said that those two things were verified, but there isn't much more to it.