Club 80-90 Forums

This site is awesome! Good deductive skills guys - that all sounds very plausible, so thanks very much. I'll try to confirm on Saturday.

If this is how it works, then does that mean that I could connect these two wires (the red/black and red/white) onto the same spade connector on the solenoid? Bear with me...

One of the spades on the solenoid is pretty corroded, but the other looks OK. I've tried to clean the bad one up, but it's almost disintegrated. My plan for the weekend was to remove the starter and try to solder some kind of new connector onto the old stump, so that I could reconnect everything as it was before. However, if itchyfeet and colinthefox are right, then it sounds like these two wires are basically connected together anyway, so I could just make something to fix both wires onto the remaining good spade and save myself a load of hassle.

Is that right, or am I misunderstanding something? I had wondered about doing this, but as both wires had registered positive on my meter at various stages it seemed like a bad idea. It now seems as though they're actually designed to "cancel each other out", so it might work after all?

Quite a system - she's a weird old bus!

I'd trace the other end of the wire first before deciding what to do, if it goes to a relay which does nothing then you don't need it.

You need the main trigger wire to have a very good contact. You could cut off the crimp and add a piggy back spade to the main 6mm2 black and red but you would need to make sure you crimped it properly. If the wire is corroded black you would need to clean that off or cut the wire back to shiny copper before crimping (search ebay for yellow 6.3 piggy back spade). If you do I advise vaseline on the wire before crimping to keep the moisture out.

If that terminal on the starter is that corroded then you have to ask yourself if the starter motor is the problem with poor starting? One test is to connect a long wire from the spade terminal with the 6mm2 black and red ( can just strip and twist it on if terminal is clean) and then measure the voltage on this wire when cranking. The voltage will always dip when cranking but If the voltage is very low or intemitant then suspect the supply, if the voltage is constant but sometimes it does not start suspect the starter.

A quick update for anyone that's interested.

I couldn't get the starter off this afternoon as the upper securing bolt seems to be seized in place: someone has previously inserted an Allen-key-to-socket adaptor into the head of the 8 mm Allen bolt and left it there. This might have been a good idea once, as in theory I should be able to get at the Allen bolt using an extension bar and a socket wrench, but over the years it's corroded away so that neither my socket nor my Allen keys will fit This is obviously going to bite me at some point, but I'm hoping it can wait for warmer weather!

As far as I can tell the red/white wire is to isolate the auxiliary battery during cranking, so thanks to itchyfeet and colinthefox for pointing me in the right direction. It's not related to the auto gearbox inhibitor switch as the staring behaviour of the van is as expected with or without this wire.

Some contortions with my multimeter managed to confirm that the two spade connectors on my solenoid (one good; one disintegrating stump) are essentially the same electrical connection, so I've cleaned up the wire ends, replaced the connectors and joined both wires to the remaining good spade on the solenoid. I've then smeared everything in Vaseline and taped up the connections.

The picture below shows how things looked halfway through reconnection this afternoon.



Upon replacing the connectors I discovered that the end of the red/black wire was more badly corroded than I first thought, so with a bit of luck this might explain my starting problem. Having switched everything onto a single spade she's been starting fine all afternoon, but I've been tricked before so I won't begin celebrating just yet. Fingers crossed though...

Hopefully she's going to take me ski touring in the Cairngorms tomorrow, and if she won't start to get me home in the evening I might be forced to ski on Monday as well

Cheers all!