Re: Mk1 172 Hybrid Track Car Project
The curse of the Mk1 struck again today, some bad luck (for once in the past few months).
As some of you who've seen the car in the past few months will know, the starter was getting 'lazy', which I presume has been caused by excessive heat from the exhaust manifold. Anyway, recently its been getting worse, it will always start, but the starter will only turn over very slowly (like the battery is going flat, but it isnt).
Spotted a starter motor on eBay for £35 from an engine builders which was only down the road in Warrington. Decided to go and pick it up today to hopefully fix the problem once and for all.
If your reading this ^Jonff^, the starter definitely comes out of the top with quite a bit of room to spare
Both new and old...
So after a lot of faffing of removing the old one, and fitting the new one, I went to connect the main power connector, which sits over a thread sticking out of the solenoid....When i went to tighten it, it just snapped clean off!
So, had to remove the starter motor again to see the damage...
Great! Not much I can do with that....
Decided I could try and get it working by putting the solenoid from the old starter motor to the new one, because I knew that solenoid was fine.
Fitted it to the new motor, and then fitted that to the car once again. Wired it up, and went to start the car, but got nothing! The solenoid fires but the motor doesnt turn over.
Anyway, checked if the motor was getting 12v which it was, tapping with a hammer etc, but nothing at all.
So removed it once again, and hooked it upto a battery with jump leads, then fired the solenoid. The solenoid works fine but the motor just doesnt spin up....great, a dud starter!
Thought id swap the solenoid back to my old starter motor just so I could use it for a few days until I can get something sorted, but went to undo one of the bolts holding the solenoid on, and it rounded off (thanks for using Torx bits Renault!)...
So, off down to use the milling machine to get the bolt head off, the push bike came in handy for once lol. Drilled it out and managed to get the solenoid back onto my old starter motor, which was then tested with jump leads and works OK again...
Just need to re-fit that now tomorrow, then get a new motor sorted (edit: one on the way now, cheers Jay!)...
Got some more updates in the next few days, il post them up soon