The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Hi all,

On Sunday, after a fantastic fly-in weekend where I was admiring how well my plane was performing and how well the weekend had gone, my starter failed after landing and fueling up. Luckily, I was back at my home airport and not stranded somewhere far from home, especially at a fly-in in the middle of East Texas.

Today, my mechanic pulled it apart and found that the clutch gear shattered. He was able to get a large piece of the gear out from there, but there are now missing fragments that are hopefully in the oil pan. This same issue happened to the plane sometime not too long before I bought it, so it's happened 2x in less than 2 years or so.

My questions are:

1) At this point, am I better off having my mechanic repair the starter with a new clutch from Niagra Air OR should I bite the bullet and spend the money to switch to a Skytec starter? Original would be cheaper option now and would keep my plane closer to original, but I could have the same issue again in a short time. SkyTec would reduce the weight a little and give me a more reliable solution.

2) What steps have to be completed to make sure that my engine is okay and that the pieces of shattered gear are not going to cause further damage elsewhere?

Any advice / tips are appreciated!

I'd recommend you get the Niagara FIVE-roller clutch instead of the original or any rebuilt. They are so much better than the originals and more durable. Never heard of one failing...

The SkyTecs introduce their own set of issues. A search or Google will reveal them.

I believe you should first pull the oil screens if you still have them... but even if you have a filter instead of a presure screen, pull the suction screen and clean out that area. Take inventory of what was recovered so that you find all 3 rollers, and pull the gen/alt/mags and look down inside the accy case. Washing the accy case out and reinstalling the gen/alt would likely clear any remaining bits. You've already survived the worst-case scenario by not suffering a crank/cam-gear failure from a roller falling into it while running.

Thank you George for the advice. I will talk to my mechanic today and have him go that route. I forgot to go through the logbooks last night to see if when this happened previously whether they used a rebuilt / original or if they had gone with the Niagra part. It is odd that it's happened twice in recent years though.