OT: starting hassle.

Would it upset the immobiliser etc. if you left the earth lead off overnight to check?

Martin

Now Austin, beleive it or not a scout mini bus my mate looks after had exactly the same problem and its an LDV as well. Will be seeing tonight so will ask what he found.

Dom

"Austin Shackles" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I have a similar problem with my 300 tdi discovery. I've been running on diesel/veg oil mix about 70/30 ratio. It has been reluctant to start on colder mornings. Wednesday it refused to start - slow cranking and not firing. I tried a quick jump start from my son's Punto but no joy. I put the battery on charge overnight and tried again this morning - still no joy, same symptoms as before. I got home from work this evening. Took the charger off and reconnected the battery. Played my blowtorch over the fuel filter, injector pump and cylinder head for a few minutes. Result - engine started. My brother suggested it was the battery at fault, but I'm not sure if the fuel mix might be causing the problem. I got a reading of 14volts across the battery once I got it running.

I'll try and start it again tomorrow morning and see how it goes. Davy M.

I'm guessing there is another drain that only appears when you walk away... I hade one on the 110... I disconected the clock and radio and it's been fine since. Got a radio with memory?

Lee D

How old, how cold? Lead acid batteries don't like the cold and few degrees can make all the difference. The old battery (7 years) in the DII wouldn't want to know if the overnight temp had gone below -3C, above that it was fine. But the little magic eye SG indicator was black rather than green.

"Not apparently dud" by checking the specfic gravity of each cell or by the brute force "measure the voltage while pulling 200A through a dummy load" test?

On the new battery? Had that had a good run since fitting, lead acids to self discharge over time but do take a quite a while. If it hadn't had a good run it might not have much charge in it just after fitting.

To me that sounds on the high side at least for the long term. That's

25A/hr over a week... Does it drop to a more sensible level once everything goes to sleep? Is the immobilser/lock an RF thing and being kept awake by something just like some LR's...

It could still be the starter motor. If the field windings are earthing out, then it will draw a much higher current than it should do, whilst still cranking at normal speed. Two or three starts with only a little running inbetween would drain the battery quite effectivly, and it would appear that the battery is failing when it is not. It might be worth checking what current the starter is drawing.

Alex

Spoke to my mate tonight and he suggested checking:

All connections are tight Check Earth straps Starter motor could be going duff

The minibus fault was a dodgy connection on the starter motor itself. A quick re terminate and all was well.

Dom

In message , Lee_D writes

My first 110 sat in the path for weeks, and fired up first time, every time. I bought it a radio, but didn't fit it. My second 110 sat in the path and, once fitted with a working alternator, could be left for weeks and would always start.. I fitted the radio according to my interpretation of the wiring diagrams. Every few days or so, had to charge the battery to get the 4 cylinders throbbing away. Measured current drain with every tool I had, and nothing showed more than 0.0something amps. The radio never retained its memory, even though I had the right wire connected to what seemed to be a permanent feed. Couldn't hear the radio anyway, so no great loss.

Took the radio out to get ready for the change to the Disco. Return to

110 always starting scenario.

Installed radio in "new" Disco, using existing standard wiring. Seems to be OK, although I play in the Disco every day while it's new to me, so may not have left it for long enough. But....... every seemingly random once in a while, the radio forgets all its settings, and has to be set up again from scratch.

It's badged Tevion, from Aldi, and looks like the ones that are in there today except it doesn't play mp3's. As far as I can deduce, it must be sucking power, but only when I turn my back. I think I hear the local tip calling.............

Hi, I'm assuming its a diesel (LDV??), check the glow plugs are working. We had problems starting our citroen picasso in Bavaria in anything colder than -8, yesterday I checked and not 1 glowplug is working, voltage is there, but no heat on the plugs, plus open circuit on each one. Seems a common problem even though it's only 6 years old. Did not think of it before because it always starts on the button in "normal" temperatures. I also assumed it was a cold or dodgy battery, combined with short trips, and even took a spare battery and charger with us on holiday. I know your battery seems to be at fault, but it's worth checking the glowplugs.

Cheers, Andrew

1986 V8 110

On or around Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:40:56 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice" enlightened us thusly:

Yesterday, jumped it to start it and left it running, then also had it on the battery charger. So it was pretty well charged, I reckon. This morning, no startee again, took the "old" (not very, from the looks of it) battery over, which had been on charge overnight, jump leads battery-to-battery and started up straight away.

Currently, the "new" battery is off the motor on charge, and seems to be charging correctly; i.e. it took not much current to start with and current is going down slowly, which is what I'd expect since it'd only just come off the vehicle which had been running about half an hour before.

I'll use it today and tonight, see what it does in the morning with the "old" battery on it.

no, it's the PATS passive thing. not an alarm, and no locking aspect.

Tracked it down to one of 2 fused circuits. One is horn/cigar lighter - that shows an odd (and unexplained) surge of about 0.2A when connected but then drops to zero.

the other circuit is interior lights, instruments and tacho. That shows about 0.25A for a few seconds then stabilises at about 0.15A. The wiring diagram shows some kind of ECU on the instruments.

Next thing will be trying to trace the interior light circuit to disconnect it, I suppose on the chance that there's an intermittent short.

Current thinking has 2 possibilities:

1) the alternator is not at full voltage and therefore not charging the battery fully, combined with the constant load that could result in flatness overnight. Alternator is definitely generating, but maybe not full voltage. Voltage like I said is still over 14V with headlamps on, so it's putting out current. 2) the load when switched off is not constant - something is drawing current intermittently (either a short or a component), and that 0.15A steady drain is not the whole story.

Jump leads onto the battery terminals has eliminated all the connections in the high-current circuit except for the ones to the battery posts. In any case, the battery voltage is down, so I think the battery is genuinely low.

This is going to be one of those bastard faults that involves replacing half the sodding vehicle, I can tell.

On or around Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:58:29 +0000, Alex enlightened us thusly:

Possible, but it's draining the battery overnight, per other post.

On or around Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:01:44 -0800 (PST), "Andrew T." enlightened us thusly:

no glowplugs on this one[1]. It uses cleverness in the fuelling instead, I assume. Given a battery capable of cranking it it starts easily, even in the cold. I guess the failing to start has 2 possible causes, cranking too slow and/or voltage drop causing the ECU to cut out and not supply fuel.

[1] no, really. I mean it. no glowplugs.

On or around Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:23:48 +0000, Bill enlightened us thusly:

[radio]

has recently had new sounds, but not that recently, the failure to start is only in the last few days, the radio's been on it for about a month.

Direct rather than indirect injection then?

Is it possible they've sold you a duff new battery?

TonyB

One other long shot Austin - wet sound insulation under the bonnet which touches the battery posts when the bonnet is shut thus shorting the battery?

That would dry out rather quickly, I'd have thought, if it was on the battery.. Last time I dropped a spanner onto a battery I had to duck as it shot past me at speed! My battery is of the type that has each individual cell connected to the next via a thick bar on top of the battery, so there's live metal bars all the way across the top of the battery.. Not a good design.

On or around Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:50:09 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

I didn't know you could still get those.

The new battery charged OK overnight, and it's currently running on the "old" battery...

This morning the solar panel display tells me it's -10 outside, and the bugger started straight up no problems.

Odd.

Sometime I'll hunt a big current meter and measure how much current the alternator is putting out. It's possible that it's low on amps, so appears to charge OK but doesn't cope so well with all the loads turned on.

Distinctly possible if it's dropped a diode or two in the rectifier.

You probably can't, the batteries in the landy and the pinz are *old*, much older than I'd have thought they should be. The battery in the landy was in there when I bought it 8 years ago and the pinz batteries (it's got two as it's 24v) appear to be of similar age.

Can you check the battery capacity on a test load?