Hi,

I forgot to look at the spot you are concerned about. It’s smaller than my conclusion is here.

It sure looks like it was broken as a set since the outer and inner shoulder diameters are missing their pieces.

The housing on the left was the one that got hit and that broke the thinner inner lip of the right housing.
In being it’s so clean and finished up looking it was done before the tear down.
Since cores come without boxes normally into the auto parts stores, they the store ship them loose or in plastic flip top bins with starters, unless, you give up your new box to the store. Many stores want it that way but it’s the customers choice over any preconditions to get the core money credit.
So it most likely happened long before being rebuilt.

It’s interesting that both housing stayed together. So it goes to the credit of the Bosch rebuilders that the pieces are tracked as a unit. As it’s important not to mismatch them to keep the bearings bores aligned squarely.
Likewise, Before you take any electric motor apart you should scribe a line on the outside to keep the halves aligned.

If you didn’t see damage coming from outside of the box towards it I would say it was damaged during processing and long before packaging.
If you shake the unit and nothing rattles it’s probably ok.
The stator housing or outer windings pretty well seals off that inner joint from anything moving.

Another ticket to punch into the brain pan here is the fact that dismantlers crate up a hundreds of different alternators and starters to rebuilders.
Starter are heavier and more pointed on the same pallets.
It’s All a Wholesale Event using a $$ rate by poundage!

I have seen them with a cut off battery wires right at the B+ terminal.
For sure they are not handled very gently over into a big crate box.
It’s just scrap metal weight to them.
Junkyards make out far better if we pull something before they have too, plus no there’s no shipping to anyone. A junkyard core charge or exchange is the nice bonus either way!

There are more legal ways to take automobiles than there are illegal ways. (:) In Just One phrase “Total It.”
I heard one stat, how true I don’t know but 10,000 cars a day in California get their bodies are crushed up. Also In a day the US loses people @ 7,000 a day.

I guess we are ok? As it takes less time to make a car than birth out a human and the alternator, it has a warranty against defects! (:-)

Phil