starting problem keeps on comming back !??

warriorBX · Post by **warriorBX** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:21 pm

hello everyone, hope im not going over common ground but ive had a problem for the last 3 months. at first it was intermittent, the car would be working fine and i would come back to it and it wouldnt start, so i'd flip the bonnet up and fiddle with a few connections - all of a sudden it would fire up. so i cleaned and checked every wire and contact i could find, and relocated one of the main earths to a more secure position. that solved it so i thaught. it worked fine without a hiccup for two weeks ! then one day down at the shops, it was back. from what i could make of it, it seemed certain the starter motor was not getting enough power to it. (by this stage i had tried 3 different batterys on it including my brand new one, and had an alternator check carried out on it too and the battery is accepting charge and re crimped a few suspect wires) Anyway we have tried taking a lead directly from the battery to the starter to bypass all other wires and still it would not have it. so we took the starter motor of and examined it in detail, we tested it out of situ and it worked fine, but because the problem is so intermittent we narrowed it down to the solenoid - the theory being that sometimes it wasn't contacting the points properly. so in frustration and almost certain of the problem we got a new starter motor, £90 !! for three days the car worked fine, i mean it started up better than it had ever done before ! then i went to take it for a drive and all of a sudden we are back to square one. we are utterly sick of trying to suss this one out, thaughts of taking it to a cliff and putting a brick on the accelerator are cropping up. please help if you have any ideas as to what might be causing it ? thanks for your time

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 7:21 am

One thing I can think of is Connections to the battery!

Ok so you think they are tight? Well what about checking the voltage loss from the wires. To the clamps right at the battery?

Say that because my BX was showing symptoms of Starter Failure and battery drain it turned out the old leaded connections to the Live (=) terminal were losing current. Replaced the clamp and viola problem fixed.

DLM · Post by **DLM** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 8:35 am

Never knew you had an electric viola, Kiwi

Seriously, good point to check.

warriorBX · Post by **warriorBX** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:57 pm

yea theyre definately worth checking, after posting the last topic i went over the connections because we couldnt see it being much else, so we've taken the earth stud out and cleaned it, and redid the terminal connections. and now its fireing up everytime. fingers crossed, but i think they could have been causing the problem, thanks for the advice guys, appreciated

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:24 pm

Good result nice to here back on a problem solved

Like yourself I was thinking on starter motor and practically everyone was saying that so I ended up carrying a spare (yes Starter motor) in the boot with some tools to do a roadside change when needed

Brand New Battery but we started to think a fault with it combined with a drain from dodgey starter. Anyways the fault and battery drain reached a point of nothing from the dashboard situation. So local sparky put his leccy probe on the terminal and some exposed cable by the clamp and the problem was found.

One hitch though replacing the clamp that inch does matter when trying to connect the battery up again. The cable was to short

My live feed now goes through the battery tray which is not ideal.