Buggered starter solenoid?
Turbo Mini Forums

Hi guys,

Set my fuel pressure, then went about getting some oil pressure, only to find nothing happens when I turn the ignition!

Its a inertia setup with the seperate solenoid, which is wired up all correctly and the terminals are all tight.

Battery is fully juiced at 13.4v

I get a good 13.22v at the battery cable side of the starter solenoid, when i go to crank the engine it drops to 13.19v.

I have 0v on the other side of the solenoid at ign point 2, when cranking it stays at 0v.

Does this mean a dead starter solenoid? Its earthed strongly via the bracket, and ive earthed the engine to the body with a jump lead.

I thoght the solenoid was new but who knows!! I dont want to go and buy one only to discover its something else.

Any advice would be great!

Edited by richminiturbo. on 2nd May, 2009.

Simple test - but do it carefully - a screwdriver across the two big lugs

BUT MAKE SURE IT TOUCHES NOTHING ELSE......

If the starter spins and cranks the engine, then either the solenoid is fooked or your wiring to it is wrong. If the engine doesn't crank, most likely the starter motor at fault...

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Ok i'll give it a go in a sec, just going to knock up a will.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Leave me the skid bus.

Good news guys, i'm alive. :) (if that's good news to you, im unsure!)

Almost lost the eyebrows, and my screwdriver is now abit, erm, toasty.....

Bridged the two terminals on the solenoid and everything lit up like guy fawkes night but nothing happened cranking-wise!

I started to hunt around for my rubber mallet to clout the starter with it but couldnt find it, will try tomorrow!

Im probably wrong, but if the solenoid was OK, wouldnt I be getting +12v on the terminal opposite to the battery cable when I attempt to "crank" the engine over? At the moment its 0v when at key position 2, and 0v when supposedly being cranked?

I guess it could be a combination of a rhubarb'd solenoid AND starter, which I would just love to be the case, not.

Rod, with regards to your replies to my previous thread about intertia solenoid wiring:

http://www.turbominis.co.uk/forums/index.php?p=vt&tid=283808

I got my multimeter set to Ohms across the two available spades and the backplate/earth of the solenoid, trying to find which one was the correct spade for the "start signal".

One gave me "1.0" and the other "0", would the latter be the terminal to go for?


Allllso, it may be irrelevant, but I had just aswell ask- on the two large threaded lugs, does it matter which way round the +12v from battery and 12v wires to starter/aternator go?

Thanks

Assuming your DVM is set to continuity, it's the one that reads "1" or bleeps that is the operating coil.

The one that reads zero is the ballast bypass - it is connected to nothing until the solenoid pulls in.

The big lugs only matter in so much as the big brown wires must go to the battery lug and the small ballast bypass tag (if you were using ballast ignition, probably not, but if..) is technically switched to one lug only once cranking but actually doesn't really matter as the two big lugs are bridged when cranking anyway.

The fact you had Guy Fawkes means either the starter is stuck or the cable between the solenoid and it is shorted (can often happen at the lug on the starter itself or inside the starter at the lug if it has been twisted too much).

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

I started my car by bridging the terminals like that for months! Those were the days...

Oki doki thanks Rod.

I was running out of light at the time so only had a chance to test the screwdriver-bridge technique with the starter signal wire on the terminal that gave "0" in the DVM test I did.

Although I did try cranking the engine over with the starter signal on both of the available spades with no luck, i'll put it onto the proper spade and try the screwdriver trick again.

Failing that ill get the starter off and attempt to spin it up off the battery with some jumpleads.

Fingers crossed I can find out whats causing the problem, sure I have a spare solenoid somewhere.

Thanks again

Edited by richminiturbo. on 2nd May, 2009.

It doesn't matter about the connections to the two little spades when doing the screwdriver test as you are quite litteraly bypassing the function of the solenoid - if the ignition is turned on and the starter motor works and is not stuck or shorted, the engine will start irrespective of the little tags.....

Best way to be sure of which little tag is right (as not all DVMs read "0" and "1" the same way around, which is why I prefer Ohms to continuity....) is to take a little bit of wire from the big lug which has the battery cable connected to it and touch it to each of the little tags in turn - one will make the solenoid click (and spin the starter if it's working), the other will do nothing.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Ahhhh I see.

Thanks alot Rod you're teaching me quite a bit here!

First off i'm just going to have the starter off and see whats going on there.

Will let you know my findings, thanks again!

I've now given the starter a few good clouts and hooked it up to the battery on the driveway....



So i'm guessing i'll need a new starter!

Edited by richminiturbo. on 3rd May, 2009.

Assuming battery was fully charged (and not knackered), looks like it's dead.....

Not too easy to tell from that video but it looks like the later type withOUT a seperate band cover over the brushes so not too easy to have a quick look inside.

On the later type the whole end plate has to come off and it all gets a bit fiddly with the brushes (getting them back). EDIT - although the very late type are quite easy as they have a face commutator rather than a radial one (end EDIT)

Still worth a look though - what often happens is the main power stud gets rotated relative to the motor with undoing / doing up the cable and breaks at the soldered joint to the windings inside.

Edited by Rod S on 3rd May, 2009.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

I took the starter motor apart to find fairly coroded internals which I cleaned up with contact cleaner and put it all back together.



Still no luck! With the sparks flying my neighbour came over and said that he had a spare inertia starter.

So I had that on the jump leads, was intially sezed but I got it spinning with the, hammer. Turns out it unfortunately only spins round, the cog doenst run up to the starter body to engage with the flywheel for some reason.

I found that out after fitting it and hearing it just spin round. However I still had to bridge the terminals on the solenoid to get it to do anything, so Im guessing thats broken aswell!!

Edited by richminiturbo. on 3rd May, 2009.

You're not having a lot of luck.....

On the one that just spins, can you slide the cog up the scroll (rotating it slightly as you go) by hand OK or not ???

If you can slide it up by hand easily but it doesn't go on electrics, either

a - that motor is also knackered and not speeding up quickly enough, or

b - your battery is actually knackered although you may not realise it, or

c - the usual suspect, earth, battery to boot floor or engine to body....

BTW, the one you took apart... I've seen worse. At least it is a face commutator so easy to re-assemble....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Yeah the whole lot spins freely enough, spinning up really quickly when on the battery.

The cog rotates freely by hand up the scroll yes, but rotates in the opposite direction to the main splindle, if thats right?

I've tried it on my daily driver's battery and its exactly the same!!

Getting abit frustrated now. Just discovered that I have an oil leak which I cant get to fixing with the engine in situ, so i'm off ouitside to take the engine out now arrgggh!

Right, if you put the "new" starter on the drive (as per your video) and touch the jump lead you should,

a - need you foot on the motor or it should jump to the other side of the drive, and

b - the cog should literally jump down the shaft with quite a thump.

If it does both of these but doesn't turn the engine over (when using the screwdriver bridge method) there is something wrong with your heavy current wiring (earths most obvious) before you worry about the small tags on the solenoid.

I would try to get the starter issue sorted before taking the engine out for the oil leak or you may find yourself doing it twice....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Ok doki.

I've fitted a working starter motor now and have cranked the engine on it via the screwdriver method.

I've got a multimeter on the red/white wire and when I turn the key to its last position, it doesn't respond with a +12v, so it must be something to do with this!!

However when I turn the key to crank the engine, I hear a "click", traced this to a relay on the drivers side corner of the bulkhead. It has a brown wire, brown/red and our white/red going into the plug. I tested the white/reed at the plug for a +12v upon cranking and its there.

Any ideas?

What year is the car (specifically the loom it was taken from another car).

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

As far as I know its the loom that's original to the car which is a 1990 mayfair I think!

In which case the wiring was originally intended for a pre-engaged starter motor, not inertia....

Was the original lucar connector on the end of the red/white wire a big one (not a standard one) and the wire long enough to reach the starter motor ??? (although it may have already been cut off and swapped anyway).

Basically, when they swapped over to pre-engaged starters, the wing solenoid was no longer required as the solenoid is part of the motor on a pre-engaged.... BUT, on a pre-engaged, the solenoid also has to move the pinion in and out so is much bigger and draws more current (hence the bigger connector) so they added an additional relay to avoid melting the ignition switch.

I haven't a clue where it's fitted but the colours you've quoted sound right.

So either the relay's fooked, or the modifications to the wiring to suit an inertia starter aren't quite right.

Can you photo the relay and connections to it ???

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Thanks Rod!

Here you go:




I did give the connections a good douse of contact cleaner earlier aswell, although they didnt realy need it.

The white/red wire at the solenoid kind of looks more like white/brown! Anyway, this has a standard sized spade terminal on it, the same size as the male spades on the solenoid.

I did some reading prior to switching to this type of starter and was under the impression it's just a case of altering the lengths of the wires and wiring the 12v from the battery to one side of the solenoid, the short 12v cable to the starter and the other browns to the alternator. With the brown/red wire going to the large spade on the solenoid.

Thats how I have it all anyway, I thought thats all there was to it!

Edited by richminiturbo. on 7th May, 2009.

White/brown is wrong.... are you sure it's not white/yellow (in which case it's the ballast bypass) but take it off for the moment.

What you have on the relay is is small white/red = start signal from ignition switch (hence you getting 12V on it as you said earlier) and small black is earth so the relay clicks when you try to start.

The big brown is live from battery or alternator and the big brown/red went to the pre-engaged starter solenoid (hence it being big for the reasons I said earlier).

So if you've put the other end of that brown/red onto the large spade on the solenoid (ie, with the browns) it won't work...... the relay is just sending power back to itself.....

Back to basics - the relay isn't actually needed with an inertia starter, the wing mounted solenoid carries the heavy current without needing a large feed as it isn't moving the pinion.

So you have two choices, either take the small red/white off the relay and run it down to the correct tag on the wing mounted solenoid (for correct tag, read earlier in the post) and leave the rest alone as the relay is not required, OR, keep the relay in case you ever want to use a pre-engaged starter and connect the other end of that red/brown to the correct small tag on the wing solenoid - obviously you will need to fit a small lucar connector to the end of a large wire.....

I hope that makes sense....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Rod, i've just taken the white/red out of the relay and ran it directly to the correct spade on the solenoid - hey presto it works!!!

Thanks alot for your help and being patient, it's taken me a while!!

:)

result!

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