Not the normal Hot Start problem.

[simon.b]

I recently started getting the TADTS hot start problem and after a search on here contacted David at Mod-Wise for one of his relay kits. This seamed to sort things out and with the run out to CITP 3 not giving any problems I thought it confirmed problem solved.

However last week she did it again and wouldn’t start for over half an hour, fortunately I was at home so I left her over night. Next morning, no problem started first go.

Over the weekend I decided to strip down the starter and have a good look, I also checked back on a previous post of mine on the Chimaera Forum too offer some humble pie and realised I’d really put my foot in it, sorry guy’s.

The motor and solenoid were stripped cleaned and inspected everything looked like new, no visible wear, a bit of stickiness in the solenoid from old grease but nothing serious. All was reassembled with an new alloy heat shield from the exhaust manifold and she started up fine.

With the Griff up on stands I lay under her with the engine running to check out the heat build up. While the heat shield did stop the direct heating once the block and bell-housing got hot this was just conducted back and after a while both the motor and solenoid were too hot to touch. Sure enough after switching off she would not restart.

To cut a long story short I found that, if while hot I touched a wire from starter live feed to the solenoid switch wire the starter worked fine. Further investigation showed that once the engine was hot the switch wire feeding the solenoid was no longer live on turn key. Since I now have the Mod-Wise relay fitted the car can be started with the ignition on and simply by touching a live feed to the power side of the relay, in other words Hot Wired.

In conclusion;

Any heat shielding to the starter seams to me a waste of time unless a very thin heat resistant gasket is fitted between the starter and bell-housing to prevent conduction.

In my case it is the wiring between the key switch and the passenger foot-well loom that is susceptible to heat and not the starter and or solenoid. There is no feed to the relay when hot.

All this kept me quiet last weekend and I suppose working through the wiring, immobiliser etc. will do so next weekend. Any thoughts or comments would be most welcome.

Cheers,

Simon.

[simon.b]

That’s a good point peter (GreenV8S) conduction works both ways so an insulator could really cook it, though I’m convinced heating the starter is not and never really was the problem. I believe David is on the money and yes the heat requires a bit more current to drive the solenoid, but the standard wiring was never going to deliver the goods. Though now I’ve made a heat shield I’ll be leaving it on.

My favourite at the moment is the immobiliser, though I’m not sure why the fuel pump, which I can hear, fires up and not the starter circuit. Normally when my immobiliser cut’s in everything is dead. Unless it’s a problem in the black box circuitry, is this messy, has anyone opened this up and had a look.

So I’m beginning to think it could also be an earth problem. David I never checked the earth supply back from that green block that the relay earth is connected too. What was this for ? It’s easy to check and replace although this would not of caused my original problem before I fitted your kit, so maybe I’ve two similar problems giving the same result.

Though budd’s does sound like a sticky motor or is that an engine earth.

I hope it’s raining at the weekend so I can stay in the garage and get this sorted.

Cheers,

Simon.

[simon.b]

Thanks David, if you could mail the details to my profile address and not the work one.

Cheers,

Simon.