Has the choke cable slipped in the choke lever hence choke not fully closed?

Location: Sheffield

Hi
Also, have you tried measuring the voltage across the coil when using the starter?
Regards
Colin

It looks like voltage loss to coil as the starter is operated.

Keep the ignition off, put a battery or battery charger on the coil terminal that doesn't go to the distributor, (and the other terminal to chassis or engine), and pull the starter.

It should fire up immediately.

I have had this symptom, the cause in that case was simply a corroded battery connector - it looked ok from the outside, but was hardly metal on the inside.
This would give you a gradual worsening of starting as the corrosion builds up over time.

If it isn't that, check the battery cables for breaks and does the "earth" wire go to the engine, rather than the body - and is the coil "earth" connected to the engine, rather than the body?

Cheers

Simon

Location: On a hill in Wiltshire

Also check the "earth" on the distributor.

With ignition on, and the points closed, put a digital voltmeter across the "earth" battery terminal, and the casing of the coil. Any reading indicates a bad earth. And then do the same on the "earth" side of the points - again, any reading means you are losing ingition volts due to a bad connection somewhere.


S

Location: On a hill in Wiltshire

Thanks Simon for your suggestions. I will report back once I've tried these. Tim

Hi Dave, no, the choke cable is functioning as should. One of the first things I checked. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I have just tackled a similar problem on my 1929 Rover.

After a number of problems, I found that the sparks were a bit suspect - for example, when I pressed the starter button, there were no sparks until the button was released!

Apart from the usual new plugs, leads etc. I then discovered there was no earth cable from the block to battery, it was simply relying on the engine / chassis joint - which should have been OK, but after adding an earth and a new battery, it now runs better than ever!

I hope this and the other suggestions get you to a solution.

Location: Kent

I have had a similar problem for while on my bacon slicer starter.
It's now fixed.
As suggested above I cleaned the battery posts and clamps even though they looked OK. Problem gone!

When you say turns the engine over? Is that it attached and covering the flywheel, This issue we had is that the bendix broke and never engaged, although it sounded like the engine was Turing over, im sure you might of seen it if you looked inside the starter motor but I thought it was just worth mentioning. Hope,you solve this issue.

Ollie cox

Ok,
So we have isolated it to the switch panel switch having a broken connector and a faulty wire from the main power lead to the switch panel. Both causing intermittent fault. That was it.
The new coil turned out to be a duff ( Sod's law) which threw us, and the earthing has benefitted from a doubling up. One thing that did improve things was to put two 6v batteries in the tail wired up in parallel. Plenty of capacity, only had a 56aH battery before which might have been a bit low.
All in all, it's been a bloody nightmare!!
Thank you for all of your suggestions, all of them helped us eliminate various things and it confirms the total invaluableness of this support community.
Many thanks Tim
Austin 7 trialer (13 yrs and counting) - mainly thanks to the help received on this forum.

Simon, sorry to bring the up again, but you seemed to have experienced many of these problems, and had some good advice.
Electrical gremlins again, I simply just can't get the car to start on the starter. Will turn over and over.
Voltage at the coil when ignition on 5.7v, but drops to less than 3 on starting. Earthed to the block from the battery. Am running two 6v battery's in parallel so plenty of ooomph.
Can you explain the earthing of the coil and distributor that I think you mentioned could cause problems.
Switch panel looks ok, but even when run power straight to switch, still makes no difference.
So the other thing I tried was putting a battery on the positive side of coil and with ignition off turning over, engine fired up immediately once, but then not again.
I'm really at a loss.
Is there any other advice, other than paying to take to an auto electrician, that you could suggest?
Kindest
Tim

I was recently looking at bits for my Speedex rebuild and found two types of 12v coil - with or without ballast resistors.

Not knowing what this meant, a quick Google search suggested that the purpose of the resistor is to prevent voltage drop at the coil during starting.

One page gave a good description of a DIY solution.

I'm sorry if I'm repeating something that you already know or that is written above?

One other thought is the battery cables and wiring. I believe that cables on cars with batteries in the boot need to be much beefier than those in the engine bay. I'm happy to be corrected. To test this you could use a heavy duty jump lead in parallel to the existing cable.

Good luck!

Nick

Location: on the way to church

I think the ballast resistor system uses a 6 volt coil on a 12 volt system with a resistor (the ballast)in series to drop the voltage on the coil down to 6 volt.
However when the starter is engaged 12 volts is switched directly to the coil so that the effect of the voltage drop caused by the starter is cancelled out.
Once the engine starts and the starter is released the resistor is switched back in so 6volts goes to the coil while running.

Er... I can only apologise and assume that the information I read last time was written by someone with a slightly looser grip on fact who now holds a senior advisory role in the US.

Location: cooking the Sunday roast

Are you getting fuel through ok?

My tourer takes a lot of winding on the starter which I think is down to the fuel pump

Location: On a hill in Wiltshire

So finally I've worked out what the problem is. One of the springs had come of the auto advance mechanism. That was it. Put back on, started on the button.
Could kick myself for not checking this. Amazing really how well it run once it had been bump started. Must be quite a lot of tolerance in the tuning?
Anyway, hopefully if anyone else ever has a similar problem, this thread will see them right.
Thanks for all the suggestions.

I am experiencing this problem currently on a 29 chummy. Car will bump start but will not start on starter. Starting dog worn so cannot crank start. Ignition light does not work on switch panel but cranks over well on starter motor. It is driving me mad. Have replaced coil, condenser, stripped and rebuilt carburettor (22FZ) twice, put new fuel in tank - nothing works.

Location: Esher

Roger, see previous post re the distributor auto advance. Have you checked this?
Kind regards

Is like the RN I acquired in 1981? The starter worked well the engine spun over and it would start easily on the handle. Somebody had been at the starter and it was going the wrong way round.

Don't forget the capacitor across the ignition contacts. I have had this gone bad before and came to a grinding halt in Crowborough Sussex. I replaced the original capacitor with a new one in the same package

Hope this helps
Pat

Location: California USA

I had a similar problem on my car. The starter turned over well but it wouldn't start.
I cleaned all the battery connections both earth and feed and it fixed it.
The starter seemed to be dropping the battery voltage thus starving the ignition.