Well guys, you are not going to like hearing this. The sound you hear is the starter slowly grinding away your ring gear.
It's a documented upgrade to a different ring gear. Unfortunately you need to r & R the transmission... and then you get hit with all the other the "while you're in there" upgrades (g-50 cross shaft, and new clutch, new flywheel).
I thought it would be OK to keep driving the car until complete failure. You can see from the pic that at least 30% of the ring gear was ground away, and the metal teeth were kicking around in there... grinding away everything they came in contact with! The longer you wait, the more you'll have to replace.
On a happy note, after my top end, clutch replacement and all related upgrades the car has covered 4k miles without anything going wrong. I'm almost bored. No unscheduled maint, no adding oil... just the occasional fill up with gas.
