Peatert, if those balls were blued-up and kind of eroded, it may have happened when they were stuck recently - they will have been running extremely fast, skidding against both cam and ball-recess. If the cam and recess look good, you can probably restore the starter's lost youth just by fitting new balls. Of course if you find the right deal on a replacement starter that is good too - but if it's second hand you should strip it and clean it up as you did for this one, before you fit it. Otherwise you could have the same outcome again: people do oil those things, and cause themselves trouble. It's interesting, an old Briggs like that can last a long time if you just keep it filled with clean oil, service the air cleaner, and don't do much else unless there is trouble. Most trouble seems to be caused by letting them run out of oil, letting the air cleaner clog up, or crashing them into things, and a lot of what remains is component failure after a whole lot of hours, but occasionally somebody gets oil/grease on the points so they burn up, lubricates the starter, or does something else that seems like a good idea but isn't.
