Didnt have any petrol in my daily so decided it was a good idea to take the van, confidently strode down to the garage jumped in ignition on dash lights blazing turn the key, "CLICK CLICK.... DEAD" Dash lights still blazing , checked the battery and it was showing 12v. Went to the starter and everything looked good, with he exception of the wee link wire between the windings and starter solenoid. It looked intact but it just crumbled to dust when I gave it a wee flick with my finger, turned out it was a bit of a tentative connection basically two balls of fluff making a loose connection.. Its a bit of a nuisance, but glad it didnt happen while on any of the trips and decided to give up the ghost while parked in the garage . Whipped off the starter to see if it could be shored up but after cleaning things up there wasnt really any wire tail left to speak of or solder to, so had to bite the bullet and buy a new starter £172 lighter, makes the odd day out quite expensive ... Its a small consulaton that the starter I used was the vans original unit so it was at least 40 years old .. shoud have replaced it during the resto but it worked and looked OK Check your link wire and save yourself a badly timed starter failure
Often happens. They can be replaced but has to be soldered inside the motor and needs a fair bit of heat to get a good joint.
thats the devil... I had a good look at it with a view to soldering on a new tail but there was nothing there to solder to I did have a look for coil windings and they can be got for the actual starter but from Germany and around half the price of a new starter...
New starter arrived Monday at 4.30 pm, fitted by 5.30 pm and fired up straight away.. made sure to put plenty copper grease on the link wire in the hope it lasts as long as the previous one must remember to reset the clock Might get out while the sun shines this week.
