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.

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

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.

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.