Starter motor problems

[Audiudo]

Evening guys and girls, I recently broke down and would have put money on it being starter motor/solenoid...The breakdown guy checked all the battery bits and pieces, amps it was putting out, earth the lot and finally agreed he thought it was the starter too. The car bumps easy and runs fine after..

Here lies my problem, I have bought a Lucas replacement unit and because I couldn't get under the car, I took it to a garage and they agreed to fit it for me . Phone call later from them, sorry mate, this unit is no good, it's making the same click as the other one...

Spoke to the supplier today and he said it's very unusual for a replacement to be defective and suspects it is something else. Has anyone else had this? He also mentioned there are some rings which it engadges into but not being a mechanic, throwing me to say the least??

Any help would be much appreciated as she is off the road now and my daily....

[UrS4boy]

Starter circuit info

The starter has a gear on its nose the is driven into the flywheel ring gear by the solenoid. Solenoid is activate by the ignition key.



C4 info but similar for B3 and B4:

[Audiudo]

Oh I meant to say it's on a 1996 S2 ABY??

Thanks for the above, so are you saying it's something other than the starter motor from the comments on the pictures?

Thanks Gary

[UrS4boy]

Oh I meant to say it's on a 1996 S2 ABY??Thanks for the above, so are you saying it's something other than the starter motor from the comments on the pictures?

The annotations on the photos are from other posts I have made for other things, G4 cranks sensor pin and starter wiring, nothing directly to do with your current issue.

[domas]

Ground and +12 wires.
Check the voltage across the starter body and battery's negative terminal when trying to crank. do the same with positive post and fat 12+V connection at starter. I think you will find an answer here.

Do it when trying to crank.

Or if you are lazy just measure voltage at starter pos (fat wire) and neg (body) connections with ign off AND when trying to crank.

[mike74]

Any time I've ever had an issue like this it was either the battery itself or a wiring/connection fault somewhere. Are all the live + negative cables attached securely at the battery?

[John.]

As the starter is newly fitted then one would assume the main live from the battery to be clean and secured properly to the solenoid, that leaves the earth side of the circuit to be suspect? As above checking the volts drop on the earth circuit whilst under load(anything above 0.5v is too much)........or use a jump lead between battery negative and engine earth to bypass the high resistance.
Would think the garage would have done the above though?

[Audiudo]

All sorted guys, seems like the person who fitted a suspect immobiliser on the main battery cables run out of cable behind the dash and had put another piece of cable in and had crimped the additional bit poorly through a dodgy connector. Lucky the car didn't catch fire...

You've never seen anything like it....All cut out, new cable installed etc, started first time.

Thank you for taking the time to offer some thoughts on what could have beens....

ATB Gary