Club 80-90 Forums

hi
just fitted new starter motor now most of the time it works great now and then there is a slight click and nothing, if I attach a wire to the start solenoid and put it onto the positive terminal post with the ignition on it starts fine, I think the ignition switch is on its way out any other ideas?

Check your battery voltage is good. Should be above 12 volts.

earth fault, ignition fault.

gearbox earth
motor connections
switch

If you are hearing the click then the switch must be working but the wiring (or the switch) could be preventing enough juice getting to the solenoid. The fact that it starts when you feed 12v from the battery to the solenoid rules out most other problems.

Use the diagram below to wire a relay into your ignition circuit so that the solenoid takes its power straight from the battery. I had this problem the other day and I have had no problems since fitting the relay. The best thing is it only costs a few quid or free if you already have a relay, fuse and wire

http://type2.com/bartnik/images/relay.gif

Cheers for all the replies replaced the battery today 72 ah £62 pounds delivered to the door, fitted and engine bursts into life first turn of the key, put a meter across the old battery and when the glow plugs were on they dragged the voltage down to 11.9v so that was the problem, as I said starts great now

Cheers all

Bert2 wrote: put a meter across the old battery and when the glow plugs were on they dragged the voltage down to 11.9v so that was the problem, as I said starts great now

11.9 volts only represents a volt drop of around 0.7 volts during glow plug heating....this is pretty good.

I suspect the brand new battery just has the extra oooooomph to hide the real underlying issue.

I really don't mean to be negative but I suspect the same problem will re-appear further down the line. Lets hope I'm wrong...

Martin