I rotated the fly wheel today with the help of my wife spotting the gear teeth for me. We had the fuel stop pulled out, transfer case in neutral, transmission in high gear, parking brake on, wheels chocked, etc while I rotated the drive shaft coming out of the transmission with a large screw driver.
Here's a couple more pics but nothing worse than these.
The starter is a 2920-226-6545, manufactured May 1972 but rebuilt at Tead May 1988. SS does not have the TM downloadable so I'm assuming this model is older/less common? I did verify it has 12 teeth.
Starting to think the solenoid drive is the issue. I found the starter TM on
TPUB.com and am looking over that. I'm half tempted to order a newer model replacement starter now and fiddle with this one to keep as spare but I need to sleep on it....