The dreaded starter motor..
Discussion
Having endured the dreaded click and no spinny spinny from my starter motor for the last six months, I had the damn thing refurbed last week at a cost of £85. Alas!...today I was on Sainsbury's petrol forecourt having just filled up for a country spin... when it failed again. Two kind old ladies pushed me off the pump out of the way to await the arrival of an RAC man.
Thirty minutes later he arrived only to have it spinning over and starting on the key first time.
He checked the battery...no problems...he put a volt meter across the terminals and we got 13.96volts even though the cars meter reads 11volts...he put a clip on ammeter around the main cable off the alternator and as I switched on lights, fan etc the amps climbed to 36 amps.
The starter motor seems to fail when the engine is particularly hot....anyways...its gone back to the garage that had the refurb done...hopefully I'll get it back tomorrow...problem cured....
Many thanks to those two ladies that gave me a shove...if only they had pushed a little harder I might have managed a bump start....
Paul.
Thirty minutes later he arrived only to have it spinning over and starting on the key first time.
He checked the battery...no problems...he put a volt meter across the terminals and we got 13.96volts even though the cars meter reads 11volts...he put a clip on ammeter around the main cable off the alternator and as I switched on lights, fan etc the amps climbed to 36 amps.
The starter motor seems to fail when the engine is particularly hot....anyways...its gone back to the garage that had the refurb done...hopefully I'll get it back tomorrow...problem cured....
Many thanks to those two ladies that gave me a shove...if only they had pushed a little harder I might have managed a bump start....
Paul.
Edited by S3Paulo on Thursday 5th April 17:56
pies said:
Make sure your earth points are clean,i found on mine TVR didn't remove the power coating so i had a bad earth,don't assume they are clean strip them, clean and rebuild 
Yes...I will check the earths...I did the main earth on the chassiss when the problem first arose but to no avail...
I did consider asking one of the old ladies to drive but I think the use of a small crane would have been needed to extricate her from the car afterwards...plus the fact that her giant bloomers would have been on show to the world...not a pretty sight I'll wager.
Paul.
Mike at Horizonmotorsport(my garage) lent me his Honda 'four wheel steer' to get home...what an unusual drive that is...all cars should have it.. methinks.
seem to remember having the same problem with my starter a few years back, again it was worse when the car was hot. turned out to be a dodgy connection where the wires go into the 'actuator' wiggle the wires and it would fail. think i got this part seperately from either ford or lucas?? didnt need to buy the whole motor. hope this helps, cheers.
I had a similar problem on my S and it was the main feed from the battery to the starter motor, plus the earth lead from the chassis to the battery. New leads and cleaned connections sorted the problem. I didn't manage to find anyone to sell me a ready made lead from the battery to the starter motor so I bought a length of cable and connectors to make it up myself.
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