Basically the stock autozone starter sucked, so I decided to go with a vette starter as recommended by a couple of people. I installed it yesterday and was very happy. After driving around on it for a day, when I shift into any gear it sometimes makes a funny noise like a zapping sounds. Its really hard to describe but its almost like a grind.

Basically just trying to figure out if the two are mutually exclusive or my tranny is going out, just after I put a new starter in it.

Could the starter be hitting the flywheel during shifts?

 

Did you shim the starter at all? You have to make sure there is about a .025 gap between the flywheel and the starter drive gear...

Shimming is needed usually on rebuilt engines, like yours. If it were stock, it probably would have went in like cake with no noise. Another possibility is there might be some teeth damaged on your flywheel. But I'm about 80% sure you need to just shim the starter.

 

If you mean the gear, that's hardly possible.