Surestart....oops.

The driveplate is not only on backwards, it appears to also knurled on the wrong side.

Wow I don't know Is the driveplate a little crooked?

I've had new drive plates with no knurling until after I pressed it onto the crank splines. Maybe this one started out like that.
Rusty

I haven't seen that kid in years. I bet he's a grown up expert by now. I can't turn the sound up to watch it at the moment.

Ken, how can you tell about the knurling from those pictures?
Rusty

I don't see anything wrong with any of the pictured engines.

It sounds like the listing was for a NIP SureStart and not the one out of package, so you should get a choke tube with it.

i dont see it beeing wrong

Rusty, I was making reference to the prop drive knurling and not the shaft. At a closer look, it seems as though the first coil of the prop spring is covering a portion of the driveplate. To me, it appeared as if it was on backwards. Nonetheless, I will say I have had my share of these and one thing I noted was that all of them had the backplate crack.I have new examples still in the bubble wrap that are cracked. The crack starts and goes directly through the needle valve. Funny how I have backplates from 40 years ago and all is still good. Estes offered them at $8 a piece initially. They were then listed at $4 a piece and I figured that to be impossible as the glow head was worth that much. I ordered them and they showed up.

I have about 2 dozen Surestarts, some NIP and about half out of the package, and I haven't seen the cracks referred too.
My first thought was that the cracked needle valve assemblies were not initially assembled by experienced Cox production line people and likely by the rocket people in Colorado with a hammer.
I remember ordering 10 SS at that time for $6.95 each and being sent an email that a crew was coming in on the weekend and paid overtime to assemble another 1000 to fill orders.
I received my order about 10 days later.
FWIW

start is in the bag and not installed....obviously a snap start spring

for those curious cox int has good pics of snap start springs and adapters that work with hex drive plate

By the time of the introduction of the cam starters, the cylinders on Babe Bees, Sure-Starts and Golden Bees were non-numbered with the narrow two-slit exhaust ports, two by-passes and no SPI.

Not sure about the cylinder type on Black Widows, it did have the hex drive plate and the cam start in the end though.

There were two styles of starter cams, a red one with no hex, only a small hole, and the grey one meant to be used with the hex plate.

I also have some LH snap starters in my stash, if my memory is correct, they are black plastic.

Sorry 'bout the s-storm folks. I honestly
thought the drive plate was on backwards.
I'm blaming cheap vodka.
The repentant Bob.