98 V6 saloon

[hackerman69]

realised it had wrong battery on it when come december it was sat outside house because i couldnt afford all the work needed doing for mot. gets in her to start getting some of the work done dead as a dodo ignition lights dimm as hell not even enough juice to turn over she just clicked tried overnight recharge on battery puts it back in next day same again. replaced battery , it looked like a micra battery!! re prog key to car and c/locking fine, then gets her through mot march and back on road for a month and other day was working on delivery using car gets back in , bearing in mind i'd only turned her off less than 5 mins previous, turns key all lights up fine turns again to fire her up nothing and i mean nothing not so much as a click or beep. gets out pops bonnet made sure i couldnt find any loose wires or obvious stuff, checks battery and terminals, back in car tried again still nowt, gets back out takes positive term off battery waits 10 seconds reconnects, this freaks alarm out as i didnt do it properly, eventually de activates alarm manually inside car as the button on me key fob is missing, puts key in turns checks turned again she fired up first time!!

ps: i have noticed that when you turn her off battery light stays on for maybe 1 to 2 seconds but then goes off

over the last three days she's worked fine started first time everytime

many thanks to anyone who can shed some light on the situation
dave.

[mjb]

If I were to have a wild guess I'd say it sounds like the starter motor solenoid may have gone or have a dodgy connection... Don't know if that'd cause it to not fire up the starter motor though, but it'd make sense that the motor would wait for the starter to engage first...

However a quick and relatively easy thing to check would be the main engine earth wire. Firstly make sure it's securely connected to the battery terminal!!!

To check the other end, undo the two hose clips from the air filter box (if the smaller one is original, you'll want to replace it with a jubilee clip), unplug the IAT sensor near where the small hose goes in, then lift the box up and out.

A few 10mm bolts later and you can take the tray out (just squeeze the rim of the air feed pipe to pop it out) and you should be left with this:



See the big thick wire going to where the clean ribbed loom cover is clamed down? That's the earth. Unclip the protector and you can unbolt the whole lot from the gearbox and give it a good clean (and/or reattach it).


Hope this helps