Yep, been there done that. I had a starter almost blow completely off a 454. What I found was a bad distributor, the advance was locked and when the motor was hot it was to much for the starter. It was even uglier, kept running and all I could do was cut the cable.
I switched it to the cast iron nose heavy duty starter, fixed the junk distributor, and put the rear brace back on. No more problems.
I switched it to the cast iron nose heavy duty starter, fixed the junk distributor, and put the rear brace back on. No more problems.