I resolved to replace the starter and ring gear, so I flew down to spruce and bought a Sky-Tec flyweight. I had Dan order me a ring gear ($145! Ouch!).
After pulling the airplane apart, I discovered that the ring gear he'd ordered was 149 tooth, but the starter I'd bought was 122 tooth.
Installing the ring gear was a non-event, and actually pretty neat. Cut the old one off, put the flywheel in the freezer and the gear in the oven, then it just drops on! Piece of cake
Drove (ugh) to spruce to exchange the starter. I'd had a couple people suggest that the flyweight skytecs aren't particularly robust or reliable, so I ponied up another $100 for the Kelly Aerospace E-Drive starter, which also had the benefit of being inline like the stock starter.
The next night, we did all the work. I had done baffle seals awhile back, but couldn't reach the ones in the front under the nosebowl, and the prop has to come off to remove the nosebowl, so I finished up those seals while it was apart, and fabricated some repairs to the baffles where they were cracked and broken. I spent five hours that evening getting lots of little stuff squared away: lubricating my tach cable, lubricating my carb heat, replacing some defective landing light connectors, etc. Put on a new alternator belt, and safetied a spare up out of the way, so the prop won't have to come off if I break the belt. Put the prop back on, torqued and safetied, and buttoned up the cowl.
Went to start it, and it turned through about three blades and locked up solid. The starter was seized.
A week goes by, and finally, last friday, I pulled the prop again, pulled the nosebowl, pulled the starter. Definitely a defective starter... it was rattly inside and the drive was stuck engaged. ANOTHER drive back to spruce on saturday morning, and exchanged for the B&C starter for an additional $130 (that's a pricey animal! $580! but, it seems like a nice, high quality starter).
Got home, got back into the airplane, and the B&C won't fit. The external solenoid hits one of the oil cooler fittings.
BACK in the box, and I took the day off work tuesday to make YET ANOTHER drive to spruce. At this point, the airplane's been down 3 weeks. I exchanged the B&C for the skytec inline, and drove home.
I got to the airport before Dan was off work, and I had the new starter installed in about ten minutes, but the terminal position was 4" further forward than the stock starter, and the cable wouldn't reach. I had to take loose two Adel clamps, cut a bunch of lacing cord, and remove 35 year old brittle spiral wrap, then re-route the cabling so it would reach. Got the starter cabled, and re-wrapped and clamped the wire bundles. Buttoned up the cowl, installed, torqued and safetied the prop.
Dan looked over my work, and we fired it up... cranked like a dream! Finally!
When I went to install the spinner, I noticed that one of the floating nutplates had lost its floating bit, so I had to drill it out and rivet on a new one. Gee, where do ya suppose I learned to do that?!
I test flew it last night, and everything's great. One side benefit is, I took the time to look up the procedure for clocking the prop. I'm pretty sure that the mechanic that did the annual in '06 clocked the prop wrong, because it used to have a pretty significant vibration, and after removing and reinstalling the prop according to the book, it runs MUCH MUCH smoother.
