FB TII starter spins, grinds, doesnt crank cold
 

well ive searched, everyone elses starters click, mine spins an works fine warm but spins uselessly cold.

car is 84 GSL engine is a TII S4 with NA flywheel, have had the engine on two separate cars, two separate starters and transmissions, and had the same problem both times.

when i try to start the car and it hasnt run for hours i turn the key and the starter clicks, and spins uselessly, as though it isnt contacting the flywheel. sometimes it grinds a bit but usually just a that zzzzzzzoooooooom noise of nothing happening, after a random number of tries itll catch properly and fire right up.

after the car has run for say 20 minits or so and is good an warm the starter works everytime without issue.

this is on two different starter, transmission combos (both NA FB). im told if it was a turbo flywheel it wouldnt work at all with a NA starter, i cant mount a turbo starter to a NA transmission so its fair to say i have got the right flywheel starter combination (as i said it works great warm) so what can cause this? two similarily dirty starters? poor alignment of the sun moon and stars? poor wiring?

please help if you can. ill take shots in the dark, wild guesses, clueless ramblings, anything at this point to get this figured out its driving me nuts. i cant understand how its possible that it can take near 10 minits of useless spinning before turning the engine cold and no problems whatsoever warm. id think it was the starter except ive run two different starters on it, both with the same result, and the starter its got on it now came straight off a car that i never had any start problems with. are there subtle differences in some series starters or flywheels? far as i know theres NA an then turbo an auto an thier respective starters and thats about that. this is a bit of a pain in the ass cuz the only time i have trouble is when i need to get to work in the morning and i gotta leave 10 minits early in case the starter is in a bad mood, and then again when i wanna go home an im usually in a bad mood :P

problem resolved, replaced FB starter with FC NA starter. perhaps they arent as "the same" as people say