Starting Problems

[pug_ham 244 3 Cars]

I have a problem with my mums 309 SRi, she rang me this morning to say the car was gone, I thought she mean't stolen but she corrected herself saying their was no life at all, not even a click from the solenoid.

 

I went down and tested the battery, dead as a dodo.

 

I have a spare battery so I got that to see if that was all it needed to fix it. It wasn't.

 

I have studied the Haynes manual for the 309 and went back this evening to check the wiring to the fuse box, everything inside the car is fine, ignition switch is less than a year old and the wiring to the fusebox has no resistance anywhere from a broken wire.

 

I broke down some of the connections on the fuse box to test the wiring and after putting everything back together inside I tried to see if it was any better and now also have random dash lights, sometimes (mostly) none and when they are there on nothing happens when you turn the igntion further and the lights go out again.

 

I tried a different tachometric relay just incase and this made no difference.

 

My money is now on the fusebox circuit board having died and passing very little power or none at all, when I gewt dash lights I get no reaction from turning the key to the start position.

 

Even the central locking started to play up when I tried to lock it.

 

Praying for dry weather tomorrow so I can work in the engine bay testing stuff.

 

Any suggestions on other possible cause's?

 

The car was working fine until today and last driven on Saturday when it was kicking like a mule at times and she thinks it might have backfired once on the way home as she heard a pop.

 

I said this was unlikely to be the cause because it seems to be a fatal problem and not one that would emerge and let you drive right the way home before giving up completely.

 

Thanks for any ideas.

 

Graham.

Edited June 30, 2003 by pugtorque

[Miles 331 1 Cars]

Could well be the fuse box I found some water in one once along with a nice corroded mess, One minute it was fine and the next well need I say more.

[nick 3]

I think there are a couple of fuses inside the main power distribution block(25amp I think) not sure what they do, but worth checking.

 

Nick

[red 0]

Yes I was going to say check the 2 fuses at the front right corner of the car as you stand at the front, they are bolted onto the front panel next to the battery in a black water proof box, one feeds the ignition / ECU which is allso the 6mm brown wire on the Tachymetric relay feed, and I think the other does the starter/solenoid , I'd check these first, I did post somthing about the Tachymetric relay feed wire a while back, it goes over a very sharp bend near the ECU, I protected this wire with some heavy rubber and insulation tape as to me it's a fire waiting to happen.

 

Regards Russ..........

[pug_ham 244 3 Cars]

Thanks everyone, I did some more testing today and got some strange results.

 

The two main feed wires into the fuse box when I put a multimeter from them to earth the voltage kept changing to anything from 12.58v to 1.08v. I removed the plug holding these two wires and got 12.58v everytime so I figured the fuse box was breaking down somewhere and drawing the current so I went to the scrapyard and got the fusebox off the newest 309 they had that was the same layout.

 

Went back and swapped it all over and it worked , then it didn't work so I went and checked the battery terminals were tight and wiggled the connectors that split the live up (the car doesn't have a seperate box like the 205) and it worked again.

 

I took it for a 1/2 hour test drive and it ran fine apart from misfiring once when setting off from some traffic lights (gentle throttle application pulled through it) soon after starting the drive.

 

When I got home I took the plug apart and sprayed WD40 into the terminals and plugged everything back in and so far it has been fine.

 

My mum is going to keep me informed on how it runs with her driving over the next few days.

 

The tachomatric relay is in the engine bay near the battery tray so there aren't any sharp turns in the wiring that could cause any problems.

 

I think if anything goes wrong again my first suspect will be the live feed plug in the engine bay.

 

shocked I correctly diagnosed an electrical problem, I hate wiring.

 

Graham.

[nick 3]

Well done Graham, I was the same with 'leccy problems but I still did the loom swap on the Mi conversion, I hadn't a clue what Iwas doing but got there in the end. I was walking around with a big smug grin on my face for days because I'd done something electrical

Let us know how it goes on.

 

Nick