On occasion it will not engage the ring gear. it just sits and spins. thought teh first starter was bad but now i'm on another one and it's doing the same thing.
What could cause it to act like this?

Thought maybe a missing tooth on the ring gear so I spun the engine a bit to see if that would help but it didn't.

 

Check the starter relay on the PDC

 

If that were bad, wouldn't that mean that the starter wouldn't turn at all? It turns great, but the bendix doesn't activate and hit the ring gear.

 

It happened before. Sometime it work. Sometime it doesn't. It's when relay is starting to fail. U also could check the solenoid. Check all connections and run scotch brite on the grounds and the connections, including the nuts and check battery posts and make sure it's clean.

 

Good to know, worth a try.