Allegro Club International

[Phill]

After doing so well to Solihull and back my allegro was left sitting for a couple of weeks when we went to take it out on sunday for a nice cream tea (yes we like to treat our agg ). So being blasie about the whole buissness I just tried to start her and....

Thunk.

On opening the bonnet she now has a leak in one of the hoses and has snapped the bracket that holds her coil on! Both of which are simple enough. as always the problem is with what you can't see.

The battery being fully charged and with an attempted jump the starter wouldn't spin over at all so she was pushed back on the drive which brings us to today....

The battery will still not accept anyt charge from an 'intelligant' charger, and the lights are bright (although they do dim when you turn the key.) When you turn the key once per turn you get a thunk. I've taken the starter motor off and apart and to my completly untrained eyes it looked ok well it was free to spin should it so choose to. I've also replaced the solinoid as they had some in stock down the road from me, and the symptons are the same.

There is voltage being delivered down the wire from the solinoid but not huge amounts, what sort of voltage should I be looking for?

So to sum up the symptoms.

One thunk on starting.
Good battery.
New solinoid.
Starter motor that in the winter needed an fully charged battery to start.


Has anyone got any suggestions? Or do I need a new starter motor?

Cheers Phill

[philip hough]

hi phil, have you checked engine earth lead?,or did you test starter off the car? worth a try phil
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UP YOURS CLARKSON.

[Laurence]

The battery could be duff ie 1 of the cells may be defective so you could still get some power from it to operate lights etc but not enough amps to throw the engine over, with the volt meter attached to the battery terminals try to start the engine & observe the voltage reading if it drops to 2/3 volts the battery is duff. A good battery should maintain at least 9V for 15seconds when cranking the engine over, a charged battery normally has 12.5V.
Maybe you could put the jump lead straight onto the starter motor terminal (positive +) & the other lead (negative -) onto the engine block (when the other ends are connected to a good battery). This would eliminate all other components from the equation so if the starter motor still won't turn the engine over then it could be duff, if it does turn the engine over look for poor connections/cables.
Another possibility is that the engine has a hydraulic lock ie coolant has leaked into a cylinder onto the piston therefore stopping the piston from rising, test for this by trying to turn the engine over manually, if you can't turn it over (gears in neutral) remove the spark plugs to see if any are corroded & see if you can then turn the engine over. If there is coolant in a cylinder it could have seized the piston.
Because you say the starter is clonking when you try to start it seems that the ignition switch, solenoid etc are doing their bit, cheers, Laurence.

[Phill]

Cheers for the help guys.

In the end Peter came up trumps and dropped off a starter motor for me to try, which fired her up first time so I now know that her original is duff. At least I have a running Allegro again now .