I thought I'd post this to give a word of discouragement to anyone who might try this.

Backstory: My factory Denso starter lasted 10 years. When it crapped out in 2005, I realize now it just needed new contacts, and maybe a new plunger--but I didn't know that at the time, and didn't know how good Denso starters were in comparison to the Chinese crap starters. So I replaced my Denso with an auto-parts starter, and that second starter lasted 5 years. Third starter was a "lifetime" starter from O'Reilly's--that one lasted 1.5 years. O'Reilly's didn't really want to replace it under the lifetime warranty, but did after I talked to the manager for a bit. The second "lifetime" starter has been in my truck for a year. I came to the conclusion that O'Reilly's doesn't build a great starter, like Denso, rather they offer the lifetime warranty, gambling that people will get rid of their trucks before the starter craps out, or people will forget about the lifetime aspect of the warranty. I really didn't want to go through starter-hell again, so I decided to find a Denso. Larry B does sell them, but his are expensive. Being a cheapskate I thought I could probably get a Denso for less. And I did--a lot less.

I found an NOS Cummins Denso starter for sale pretty cheap. Only problem was it was for a Bluebird bus.
The Bluebird Denso mounts with a 2-hole snout, while the Dodge/Cummins mounts with a 3-hole snout, otherwise they are--not identical--but close enough to work, or so I thought.

The first problem was removing the Bluebird's Denso snout. It's held to the solenoid casting with 3 phillips-head metric bolts, and a couple of hex-head bolts running the length of the starter hold it to the starter motor. The hex heads were no problem. But the phillips heads were a female dog to remove. Breaking them loose was very difficult. I bought a #3 phillips tip and chucked it into a 1/4" socket and used a lot of force and finally broke all three loose. The phillips heads are sunk deeply in the snout casting and buggering the phillips heads--which is easy to do--might have meant I'd have never gotten them out. When I went to reassemble it, I bought some socket-head cap screws in the same size--these worked very well.

So I removed the Bluebird snout and found a Dodge/Cummins snout at a junkyard for not too much. I knocked the starter drive out with a little mallet and installed the drive in the Dodge snout--it just pushes in. Then I greased up the gears just a little bit and bolted the snout to the solenoid. That was easy I thought. So I took it out and crawled under my truck, to see how it looked in comparison to the O'Reilly's starter that was still in my truck. I hold it up and see... uh oh--the large terminals are clocked 180 degrees off. After a lot of head-scratching I figured I could swap the large terminals. I was able to do that but it took a lot of time. A lot. So if anyone else ever thinks they can do this, you can, but be prepared for unseen problems and lots of improvisation.

Here are the Bluebird snout and the Dodge snout side by side. The swap had already been made when I took this picture:



This shows the terminals after I switched them to mimic the Dodge/Cummins starter:




And here's the completed starter:

 

Oh, I forgot to ad that the Bluebird starter came with one H.D. contact. I ordered a set from Larry B and installed a 2nd H.D. contact, so now I have a spare contact and a spare plunger.