Speaking of starters...I thought I was going to be in the same situation about a month ago, but I dodged a bullet. Did my normal Monday morning routine grocery/errand run, got home, parked, and tinkered about the house & garage until about 3:00 in the afternoon. Got bored, showered up, and headed out for a beer...turned the key...ZING! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! ZING! Not a good thing.
I was working in the driveway (concrete) earlier, so I had the truck parked in the yard. I live in the desert, 3 blocks off the Colorado River, so I'm sitting in soft, sandy dirt with pea gravel on top. Couldn't jack it up there, just would have buried the jack in the dirt. Opted for a tow truck to the shop.
After about 5 hours, the mechanic calls. Seems that out of 3 bolts attaching the starter, one was missing, one was almost completely dislodged, and the top bolt (the only one really holding anything together) was damned near dislodged and bent at about a 45 degree angle! He cleaned up the threads, installed new bolts (with Loctite, thank you very much) and I got away with paying a couple hours shop time. Great news, since I priced OEM starters for the beast at over $400.00.
My apologies for the hijack, but I just had to share that! If I could have gotten under the damned thing, it would have been obvious, but.....it's history.
Cheers...good luck.