Starter Problems?

[charcosull]

Hi All,
I have a 998cc 1991 mini. Never had any starting issues in 2 years of owning it. Untill yesterday.
I hadnt started it in 2 weeks. So thought that it was a battery issue. Charged up the battery and still nothing. Tried jumpin off another car too.

Lights, radio, heater all working fine. But when starting it was just giving a 'click'. Just a single click, not the ,d,d,d,d,d, click I have heard before when the battery was low.
Tried rocking it incase it was just stuck, still nothing.
Pushed it down the road and popped it into gear and it fired up fine.

Do ye think my starter motor is dead? Does anyone know of anything else I should try (I have a pretty basic knowledge)

Looks like Paul Kelly will be seeing me again sooner than expected.

All advice greatly appreciated.

Ciarán

[Stuie.91]

Just make sure it was in gear when you were rocking it back and forward it will move the brushes in the starter motor around to give better connection. That clicking noise normally means its a dead battery thats the relay clicking open and closed on the starter happens when there is low power in battery. Could be a few things how old is the battery? happened to me a cell in mine died so it was still giving me twelve volts when putting multimeter across it but if you got someone to crank car while doing this gives you true reading. Turned out it only had four volts as a cell just was knackered. That was a new battery aswell but sometimes out of a full batch there you can get a dud. Also check your earths. Check the battery negative terminal is'nt broken or loose either at battery or where it attaches to car, and earths in engine bay from block and starter. If your earths are all clean and fine it probably could be bad battery.

Regards,
Stuart

[charcosull]

Hi Stuart,
Thanks for the reply.
The battery is only 8-9 months old. The fact it would not start when hooked up to my other car with jump leads made me think it was not a battery issue. Am I wrong in assuming that?

All the best.

[Stuie.91]

Yeah if the battery is bad will you might need to leave jump leads on for 20 mins or so to get anywere. This happened me with my negative cable was bad. Some of the copper cables inside were broken did'nt realise it until I took it off. Did'nt matter how many times I tried to jump it until it would'nt go. Most problems like this are down to bad earths.

Regards Stuart.

[woody]

The fact that it fired on a push limits the fault to a few things.
Bad battery
bad conections ( earths or battery cable)
bad starter.
The fact it didn't start on a jump and has been lying 2 weeks would sujest the starter to me.
Remove it and try connecting jump leads directly to it .

[THOMAS]

If it has the solenoid on the inner wing some times you get a bad connection there and starter will click.

[clubmankev]

What Thomas said. I had a similar problem on the clubman some time back and it was a bad solenoid connection.

[charcosull]

Cheers for all the replies.
Paul and James Kelly had it sorted in less than 2 mins. Sticky relay.