Club 80-90 Forums

Yesterday, garage forecourt, switch ignition on, turn to starter. Nothing, lucky there's the smallest slope realised handbrake rolls slowly away gained enough momentum to bump start headed for home got to the top of hill switched ignition off tried another start which became another bump start drove to garage juice to red wire on selonoid but problems with corroded spade on the selonoid.

Had look for starter motor, plenty then had a look for just a selonoid none.can one be bought on its own?

I also noticed that the van's 1.7 diesel engine starter motor is also fitted to some Audi's?

Can you not just clean the spade connection ?

Mocki wrote:Can you not just clean the spade connection ?

It's very corroded so I thought new selonoid if possible first choice if not then try saving it it is that bad

i would be looking at cleaning it up and if need be soldering a short fly lead onto it with a new spade connection on it , anything rather than replacing a perfectly good solenoid !!

I agree. Solenoids can be an absolute pig to get off even with an impact driver. They're cheap enough (about £30) but you can soon end up in hot water unless you're very lucky. You'll need a big soldering iron (Maplins do a fab 100w iron for £15) and it should be easy enough to add a flylead as Mocki says, and a cheaper fix at that. Disconnect battery first obviously.

Thanks both of you, never though to solder a new wire and female connector if this one's beyond cleaning up.

As the van's a daily driver now the Polo has been given a new home I was thinking it would be best to have a new selonoid on hand just incase but now instead the soldering iron will be sitting in the wings.

You will have to clean it to the same extent or better if you are going to solder a fly lead on (this is what I did to bring the connection into the engine bay away from all the corrosion causing spray).
Clean spade with emery, use flux in addition to electricians solder, shrink wrap after cleaning residue off.

Isn't there 2 spade connectors on the solenoid? There was on ours, one broke off so cleaned the other one up, used hacksaw blade to really scratch it up, been fine since.