At 08:00 AM 9/13/03 -0400, Don Malling wrote:
>
>Can anyone recommend a good site for automotive trouble shooting?
>
>There are tons of them out there, but lots of them seem too vague for me.
>
>I'm a novice, so I need explicit information -- I suppose that's hard
>w/o discussing the specific car.
>
>I have almost all the car manuals available, and usually even buy the
>official Ford shop manuals, but the trouble shooting in all of them is
>lacking -- at least at my level.
>
>As an example:
>
>My '93 Ranger's starter motor suddenly would not turn over.
>Only a single click from the solenoid. The trouble shooting guides
>mentioned whether or not the solenoid clicked, but I wasn't sure if they
>meant one click or a bunch of them.
>
>So, after staring at solenoid for a while -- and it didn't say anything,
>I decided to crawl under the truck and stare at the starter motor for a
>while. I touched the main cable leading to the starter hoping it would
>notice I was there and would say something to me and sure enough the
>connector had broken off.
>
>After reading some basic stuff about what a solenoid does in Dan
>Masters' Triumph book and on the web, I've concluded that a single click
>must mean the solenoid works but something at the starter end is amiss.
>A ratcheting sound or multiple clicks means a battery problem or the
>solenoid is bad?
>
>So that's the level I'm at and the kind of info I need.
>
>Any good sites?
Don,
Check out the articles I have on Electrical on my Morgan web site.
www.team.net/www/morgan/tech
Usually if the solenoid only clicks once, it is the contacts in the solenoid
are burned and only one side of the actual switch (blunger bar) is connecting
to one of the contacts. Consiquently there is not a complete circuit.
On the other hand if it clicks many times, it usually is a dead battery.
The reason is that the battery has some voltage and current in it but
not enough to run the starter. So when you turn the key, there is enough
to fire the solenoid. It closes and now trys to give power to the starter.
The starter is drawing too much current and the voltage drops too low to
keep the solenoid engaged. The solenoid drops off like. As soon as it
opens (no current to the starter) the voltage comes up enough to allow
the solenoid to fire again. Now there is a connection to the starter and
it draws too much current, and the solenoid opens again. This is repeated
many times.
Hope this helps. Also don't be afraid to read marque specific info. This
will give you a good general understanding of what/how things work. There
are differences also, like ballasted coils, and then cars with ballast
resistors because the coils don't have ballast resistors. Some rear axels
have the hubs made into the axles, others have hubs that are splined and
force fit.
So you end up almost always needing a book on a specific car. But you can
learn the systems. That's the key. Learn how the systems work, then you
can deduce (trouble shoot) the specific problems.
John
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair@exis.net
Va. Beach, Va Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V
75 Bricklin SV1 (#0887) 77 Spitfire 71 Saab Sonett III
65 Rambler Classic
Morgan: www.team.net/www/morgan
Bricklin: www.bricklin.org
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