Water in starter?

[lutorm]

Hey all,

We've had some trouble with our starter, it seemed to not have a lot of torque or that it would draw down the battery after only a few revolutions. The logical place to start was to replace the battery which we knew had lived a hard life, but that didn't help and now the starter didn't even engage.

When the starter was removed and taken apart, we found it containing water and looking like this:



It also appears to have been arcing inside which might explain poor torque and lots of battery drain...

One of the things we've noted is that there is what appears to be a drain hole in the starter body, but this is facing *up* when the starter is mounted on the Aerovee, which seems less than optimal. Most applications of that starter appears to have it mounted with the hole down.

The plane is parked outside in a very wet location but you'd think the cowling would prevent water from ending up directly on the starter. Maybe it's from condensation build-up. Has anyone else experienced this problem and what was your solution?

[Bryan Cotton]

I have to flip my drain hole around. Somebody here pointed that out to me.

[Rynoth]

I have to flip my drain hole around. Somebody here pointed that out to me.

How did you do this? My stock starter install also has the drain hole/tube facing relatively upwards:



After seeing this thread, I can imagine how any water that makes its way into the starter through condensation or any other means has no way to escape other than (very slow) evaporation through the "drain" hole.

[Bryan Cotton]

Ryan,
I haven't done it yet. I imagine it requires taking off the end cover and flipping it around.

[lutorm]

It seems in our case we can't rotate the starter so the hole is down because of interference with the intake, but that might just be our custom intake with individual runners. I haven't looked at it myself so I'm unsure.

[mike.smith]

I've never heard of this happening to anyone before. I had my plane parked outside for 5 years with just a canopy cover, but no cowl cover. I'm 25 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, but otherwise very typical humidity. I replaced my first starter last year which was failing intermittently for unknown reasons. But I did take it apart to have a look and it was bone dry inside with no visible reason for its failure.

Do you fly in the rain?

[lutorm]

I've never heard of this happening to anyone before. I had my plane parked outside for 5 years with just a canopy cover, but no cowl cover. I'm 25 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, but otherwise very typical humidity. I replaced my first starter last year which was failing intermittently for unknown reasons. But I did take it apart to have a look and it was bone dry inside with no visible reason for its failure.

Do you fly in the rain?

This plane has seen very few flight hours over the past couple years and as far as I know none have been in the rain. Maybe if you fly regularly the heat inside the cowling keeps it dry?

[mike.smith]

I just looked at my old starter (which eventually had a mechanical/electrical problem). It has no drain tube at all. There is a plastic button in the housing where the drain tube would be, but it's completely sealed. My newer starter has the drain tube and it's pointing up. There was no rust at all in the old, sealed one, so maybe it was better to have a sealed starter than one that has a drain that can let moisture in.