Karl - thank you so much for all of your help and suggestions. I feel like a dumb azz... The starter geared flywheel came off of an Amazon Honda clone and everything appeared to be identical... Except for the flywheel taper was 0.2 c¥πt hairs smaller than the Predator.
I was bummed out...
I removed the stock flywheel in order to install a power start kit and I can not get the stupid flubbing flywheel to slide on far enough. Here's the kicker - the original stock flywheel is doing the same stupid bull crap. I am very mechanically capable, but I can not figure out wtf is happening...