Cerbera hot start click remedy...read on...

[K22LER]

Hello all...

Roses garage in Sandwich Kent have a remedy for the starter motor hot start click...it involves putting a relay somewhere in the loop...give them a call and tell them you read it on Piston heads, and that Steve Keeler recommended it, and I'm sure that they'll do it for you cheaper than the cost of a replacement starter. You will be happy you did!!!
Cheers
Steve

[gazzab]

Who are Roses garage?

[robertjp]

K22LER said:

Hello all...

Roses garage in Sandwich Kent have a remedy for the starter motor hot start click...it involves putting a relay somewhere in the loop...give them a call and tell them you read it on Piston heads, and that Steve Keeler recommended it, and I'm sure that they'll do it for you cheaper than the cost of a replacement starter. You will be happy you did!!!
Cheers
Steve

I thought it was a heat issue? Could someone clarify?

How does a relay help? Does the starter draw a bigger load when its hot?

[cossiemetro]

heat makes more resistance in the wire i think????

[headcase]

The starter is fired from a module in the boot so you could expect there to be a power cabling issue because of its long run and the fact it proberbly goes via a few million connectors.
I suppose that if you use the solenoid wire to fire a realy instead of the solenoid then have the stater connected to the battery via the relay contacts then that would work but i would class this as a bodge rather than a fix, i would much rather meter the solenoid and find out where the voltage is getting lost.

[K22LER]

Their number is 01304 617207
The relay does take the power from the battery straight to the starter and is a fix and a cure...100%
They have done this on all TVRs that they've had in as Chimeras have this problem too...the heat issue with starters is cured!!!
My number is 07900 246356 if anyone needs to discuss
Steve

[TT Tim]

Okay, if the problem is cured by simply putting in a relay, why does fitting a new starter motor work? Surely you're still using the existing wiring? If it were simplyy the increased resistance in the wire then you would experience exactly the same problem when a new starter was fitted?

Tim

[K22LER]

That's right...I have found that the forum has had quite a lot of people who have fitted new starters continue to have the same issue. Mine has been cured and it's simply bypassing the wiring that goes through several systems before the current gets to the starter.
This is just meant to be helpful advice...not a scam where someone's trying to cash in.
Cheers
Steve

[TT Tim]

K22LER said:

That's right...I have found that the forum has had quite a lot of people who have fitted new starters continue to have the same issue. Mine has been cured and it's simply bypassing the wiring that goes through several systems before the current gets to the starter.
This is just meant to be helpful advice...not a scam where someone's trying to cash in.
Cheers
Steve

Mine was solved by replacing the starter, I've had the car over a year without problems with the starter, it was only after a long hot track day at Brands that the problem started, I fail to see why bypassing wiring would resolve what is obviously a heat related issue. I'm in Kent, so I might pop along to Sandwich and have a chat. I'm also getting my starter refirbed' by a friend so I can find out what the failure was down to, i.e. solenoid or armature.

Tim

[headcase]

It does sound about right cos the wire to the solenoid originates in the boot, it then travels to the solenoid via 3 connectors (that I can count anyway), so it is quite a long cable run for a relativly high current cable to take (the solenoid will take several amp's to fire) so a potential for a fairly large voltage drop across the cable. To test the theory you need a few things,
1. A working cerby
2. A broken cerby
3. A multimeter

What you need to do is to measure the voltage drop across the solenoid cable, so put one of your meter probes onto the solenoid trigger terminal (thats the samaller one of the two not the one that goes to the battery) and the other probe goes in the boot on the ignition ecu (ill dig the wiring diagram out later and let you know exactly ware), then hit the start button,

on a good cerby i'd expect the meter to show virtually 0v
on a bad one you may see over 1v (if you do then its deffo the wiring)

[headcase]

here we go
I count 8 connectors in all! Plenty of potential for a fault!

Please note All security related stuff has been missed out on purpose!

Eddited to add:......The scaling it a bit poo, it makes it unreadable, youre best clicking on the picture then right clicking then select print.

Edited by headcase on Thursday 22 June 21:06

[david beer]

Us Griff and Chim peeps have been putting back into the circuit, the relay TVR left out, for over two years now ! Every now and then it doesnt cure it, but its about 99.9% sucess. The solenoid draws around 12 amps, where as the TVR wiring is only capable of 6, no wonder when the solenoid is hot and sticky, it will not pull in.

[headcase]

I think its well worth doing before spending any monies on a new starter, wots the worst that can happen!

[nsparey]

Having had four starter in the first 5 months of ownership, as I understand it, the problem is heat not wiring, when the fault occurs the solenoid jams due to the casing expanding, leave the car for 30 minutes or so and it will work again because it has cooled down, I had to do this for a bit while a new starter was being sourced and it works every time. Now I have a proper starter motor with a decent heat shield, no more problems. I also had the other issue with solenoids burning out on the (Nissan?) starters as they are just no up to the job. No relay will help with either of these issues, are we saying there is a third "condition”?

[GreenV8S]

nsparey said:

as I understand it, the problem is heat not wiring, when the fault occurs the solenoid jams due to the casing expanding

I think there are several factors that get worse with temperature (extra mechanical friction ,increased electrical resistance in the solenoid) and the mechanical problems get worse with age. Improving the electrical supply so the solenoid sees e.g. 12V instead of 11V may make it more tolerant of the mechanical changes so the starter motor lasts longer before the other factors become problems, or even to the extent that they don't become problems at all. Insulating the starter from the exhaust heat might help too.

[headcase]

It does look like it, i suppose it is possible that lets say you have dodgy wiring causing a volt drop so the solenoid is only firing at 10v ish, then this would work fine on most occations. But if you couple this with the heat issue then you end up with a clicking starter. So maybe if the solenoid fires at 12v like it was designed(via this extra relay) then this is enough to overpower the heat flexing issue. Now i dont dissreguard that it is a common fix on the Griff/chim and if they where fitted with poor cabeling then there is a good chance that the Cerb looms may have been made up from the same cable spools!
So possibly a combo of problems causing the fault, fixing one of them may fix(ish) the problem, but maybe all issues need to be addressed i.e. Fit the relay(or upgrade original wiring), replace starter (or just solenoid) and apply heat shielding measures. This would explain how some people have the problem re occuring after a new motor, how a new motor fixes the problem sometimes and also how fitting the relay also fixes the problem!
To address the relay effectivness I think we need to find out if there is a wiring issue.

Eddited to say; it took me too long to type, basically 'What he said'

Edited by headcase on Friday 23 June 21:33

[johnbear]

I know this is an old issue but I still a problem. Mine is a Cerbera speed 6 (early model with starter mounted to the top of the bell housing) and when below 80 degrees it starts fine. However, if it gets hot after a run the starter does not seem to have enough power to crank the engine. The starter engages and tries to turn over the engine which it does very slowly or just gives up. It is as if the piston rings have expanded and made the engine tight.

So to solve the issue I changed the starter motor to a high torque version, but when hot I get the same issue. So next I fitted a new battery lead (positive) to the starter but this has made no difference.

I have checked the earth lead to the engine. This seems fine and when cold will still crank with the earth lead to the engine block removed.

I know it cannot be the starter as the new one has the same as the old removed version. A previous post noted that his issue started after a track day and mine first occurred on a track day.

Any solutions?

[Gazzab]

Take a look at abacus alarms website. They mention the alarm wiring being a cause.

[Jhonno]

If it is turning over, the relay wont fix anything sadly..

[fatjon]

johnbear said:

This seems fine and when cold will still crank with the earth lead to the engine block removed.

Whoa, dangerous experiment. When you take off the earth lead the return path to the battery is usually down the exhaust since the rest is usually insulated (rubber mounts, rubber pipes etc. Since the exhaust is hung on rubbers the current path is typically up the lambda sensor body then through the lambda ground wire which will not like 300Amps. If it does crank for more than a second or two you got lucky and the engine is grounded by fluke in some other way like gearbox - prop - diff - drive shafts - hubs - brake pipes or hubs - handbrake cable, though not necessarily a way you want to hit with 300 Amps of return to battery current, for example the ECU signal ground. If the path back to ground is quite poor, like the entire transmission system then the current will be shared with other paths in proportion to the resistance of each path, not good.

I did a little fiddling with the starter click problem and it seems to be that when the motor is getting on a bit and hot it takes a little more current to fully push out the solenoid until the main contacts make to power to motor. The relay solution is to take the solenoid feed and apply it to the coil of a relay to pull in the relay which switches a rather fatter live from the battery to the solenoid with less volt drop, giving the solenoid a bigger kick.