arrghhhhh damn car

FCS Event Manager Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 3680

right, i think i may know the answer to this now

swapped out the alt today, the negative lead was a bit dodgy on it so i soldered on a new length of wire and put in my spare alt, started the car up and now the battery light stays lit on the dash, still not charging the battery thou, but at least its letting me know that fact lol

so out with the haynes and checked the wiring diagram, now i should have picked up on this when Chris H mentioned it the other day, that the charging circuit goes thru the starter motor, it was chris's suggestion that if the starter was dodgy it may be drawing the power and stopping the battery from charging.
so i changed out the starter motor for my spare one, from the wiring diagram it looks like there is meant to be 3 wires that connect to the starter

now my starter only has 2 wires on it, the white wire for the solonoid and the red for the main live from the battery . . now i suspect its missing a wire . . the one from the alt . . now as this has been happening since i put the engine back into the car this would explain a lot, i simply missed putting the extra wire onto the starter. . . i think .. its now too dark to check for any wires that are not connected down near the starter.

can someone confirm my theory thou, that there is indeed 3 cables that go onto the starter?

Site Subscriber Joined: 23 Jan 2005 Posts: 502

Regular can of worms

You should have a black wire coming down from the battery hooked up to a red coming from the Alt on the starter + post as far as I can see.

+ the white wire to the solenoid

basicly to shorten the wire runs they hooked the Alt to the big wire on the starter motor.

FCS Event Manager Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 3680

right, its fixed and the alt is now charging the battery as it should and boy do i feel dumb, was a 10 minute fix lol

the starter motor was missing its feed from the alt . .

when i had put the engine back into the car, i had moved all the wiring loom out of the way so as not to trap any wires etc, the live feed from the alt to the starter is a fairly long cable so i had that one tucked down along with the cable that fits to the lambda sensor.

with the engine back in and connecting all the cables back up i had missed that one, when i took a look this morning, there it was, down with the cable for the lambda, 10 mins later it was all hooked up and yep getting 14 volts across the battery with the car running and the batt light on the dash is not illuminated.

it was not all in waste thou changing out the starter and alt for my spare ones, there is a fault on the old alt, the earth lead post was knackered and the starter i have put into it is a much stronger unit than the old one

ah well another job finished on the ph2, now maybe i can get on and do some bodywork on it.

FCS Event Manager Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 3680

yep defo cured it, took the car for a 50 mile spin, up the dual carriageway and back along the back roads and down the sea front, got it home, switched off and turned her over again, fired up straight away Smile

Forum Moderator Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 19978

damn I'm good.

Site Subscriber Joined: 23 Jan 2005 Posts: 502

Cool