Starter motor/alternator problems part 4

A day later the same problem came up again so not

a bad connection after all but presumably some fault in the alternator.

In the end I found out that to get the starter motor

running I had to disconnect the alternator.

But at this moment the engine is running badly; it’s

like it’s running on four cylinders instead of eight.

I guess I’ve been playing too much with the lights and

the starter motor so I measured the voltage at

the battery and it’s only 10 Volts; a bit to low.

This is probably why I don’t hear the fuel pump running

and probably the engine is running on almost empty carburettors.

So I took out the alternator and I will have it checked

at a local car electricity shop.

I made some pictures when the car was in the garden;

the body still has to be polished but this will be done

when all the technical issues are solved.

The same goes for the bumpers; they will be mounted

when the car has received her definite greasy rust protection

and when the end silencers are adapted to two twin pipes.

Steering ball joints.

In the meantime I’m changing the steering
ball joints and gaiters

As the pictures shows this was a good thing to do.

The same goes for the gaiters.

There is a simple trick to install the gaiters;

before mounting them turn the rubber outwards

and when installing the gaiter just unroll the rubber

and it will install almost itself on to the steering rack housing.

Starter motor part 3

I greased all the moving parts

and cleaned the coils and coil plate.

I had to recuperate 4 good coil springs of a big angle

grinder to replace these deteriorated original ones.

Quite a lot of dirt.

The coils are back in to place.

I reinstalled the starter motor and the engine

run at first click.

Cut off the engine and tried again and what did

you think; No movement under the bonnet so

I had the starter out of the car again stripped

and cleaned it and tried again.

Same story. In the end I found the fault; it was

a bad connection between starter motor and

battery cable which resulted in to low power to

activate the starter.

What would have been a 30 minutes job became

half a day of work but luckily the starter engine is

very well accessible and all works well now.

Starter motor problems part 2

As it was already Saturday afternoon it was too late to

get some parts for a decent rebuild so I had to make the

best out of it.

I cleaned all the parts and in the end I had a clean

starter motor and a handful of dirt left over.

Starter motor problems part 1

So I took the starter motor out of the car to see what

the problem was.

I had this starter motor from a local garage and it came

of a wrecked 3.9 Range Rover it had a new relays and

I assumed the thing was completely revised.

But it wasn’t.


The starter was a mess inside; lots of rust and lack of grease.

The coils almost at the end of there life time and a rusty rotor.