slowmover wrote:The short story: I need a new starter motor. I burned up an old Iskra starter that has been on the engine for at least 10 years and 1000 hours with no trouble. Tempest no longer lists a starter on their site so it does seem that they've discontinued that product. I called Air Power and they want $1260 for a starter motor plus a $300 core exchange. Yikes. Seems like the best option is a new Hartzell Energizer through Spruce for $784 or a rebuilt one for $475.

Any thoughts on new vs. rebuilt or the Hartzell Energizer in general? Goal is to get the most reliability for the buck.

The long story: Went to fly about 10 days ago. I was headed out to an isolated grass strip for lunch. The engine started weakly and I assumed the problem was the battery since the plane had been sitting for 2-3 weeks. Just to be sure, after my run-up I shut down to test the restart capability. The engine wouldn't even turn over. OK, shut everything down and push back to the hangar. Once in the hangar, I turned the master back on and this time the prop turned a quarter turn with the mags off. Uh oh.

Called my A&P and he said bring me the battery, a 6-year-old Concorde. Charged it, put it on the tester, and it failed the load test. OK, I'll buy a new battery. Put it in a few days later and said "what about the prop moving with the master on." He said the starter will probably disengage once the engine is running. Started, shut down to see if it disengages, and no the starter had not disengaged. I start back up, taxi the airplane across the airport to his hangar to check it out. Turns out this was a mistake.

While taxiing, I smelled a burning smell. Hmmm. Airplane won't start at all now and we order a new starter relay. Tow back to the hangar. Three days later we replaced the starter relay, and still no start. Pull the starter off and it smells burned. Now I need a new starter.

Finally we put together what was probably wrong. Relay was bad at the beginning, and the battery was weak. New battery is a good investment so no hard feelings on that. Relay was bad so needed to be replaced, but in the process of taxiing across the airfield I probably burned up the starter. Called Spruce and they struggled to help me find the right one so I decided to do some research first, and here I am. Any thoughts are appreciated!