I had a Sky-Tec HT starter installed on my old engine and it has worked fine for a long time. I’ve pretty much ignored it. Keeping with the ‘while I’m at it’ theme, I decided to give it a thorough inspection before installing on the shiny new Lycoming O-360 (last mentioned here).
The first thing? A guy’s favorite task – take stuff apart!!
As one would imagine, it contained a lot of dust/debris from the brushes. In hindsight, I wonder if some of that material is from the bearing ‘socket’ in the end cap – keep reading for details on that.
Brushes had some obvious wear but were still in good shape. I’ll clean those up and re-use them.
Bearings seemed to be in good shape as do the copper contacts on the solenoid. Nonetheless; new bearings will be installed.
I was surprised to see some uneven wear on the armature.
That armature wear is due to a lot of slop in the bearing “socket” in the end cap (in the center of the following photo). I would expect that is due to wear of the socket – difficult to imagine that slop was acceptable when new. It is not a ‘serviceable’ part so I have some shim stock coming to try an snug things up.
Here is the .020″ shim stock cut to fit. This takes up the side to side slop. The little tabs are there to capture it and prevent it from slipping out of place.
After a good cleaning, filing the brushes, filing solenoid contact points, polishing the armature, & replacing the bearings; I put it all back together with the bearing shim in place. A little bench test proved that I didn’t break it!
If the new bearing shim will hold up, I hope to get many more years of life from this starter.
Nice work, as always!
Thank you Pete!!