Cub Cadet 1641 Starter Issues
 

Good Evening Everyone,

I aquired this mower from the orginal owner and it had been sittig for about 11 years. I went throught the entire mower quite thoroughly and it is running great after about 2 weeks of work. Then I went to start it and the starter would not engage flywheel. After investigation I found the bendix/gear on the starter was all chewed up and when i removed it I realized that it was plastic -- WHAT? I went out and found the part number and ordered 2 off of Amazon -- installed one and it worked great until yesterday. Once again the same thing happened so I grabbed the other one that came with my original order installed it last night and all was good in the world. Mowed about 1.5 acres with the mower this morning and worked great. Parked it to cool down before I put it in the garage and when I went to put it away - SAME THING -- UGH.


My question is do they make a steel version for my mower or am I going to ahve to stock on them and repalce every other day?

You could be adding fuel to the fire installing metal starter gear (if there is one) in place of chewed up plastic gears. I would investigate the cause of plastic gear failures.

Is the starter installed correctly? Shaft not bent? Is the starter gear retracted once engine is running? How does the ring gear look? Is it in proper position and true?

Do not trust SCAMAZON parts,They do not certify there vendors/supplires.
Try OEM suppliers or, Stens parts are most always OEM quality.
And as others have mentioned, check flywheel teeth and retraction of pinion gear.

You should check to see it it has an aluminum ring gear attached to the flywheel or if it is cast in to the flywheel as they use different gears.

As Lou mentioned some engines had aluminum ring gears. This is one out of a 1641 that was missing a couple teeth. I ended up buying a gear from Stens. Then I drilled and tapped the flywheel to bolt the new gear on.