My ignition odyssey on my Series III V12 is apparently not over. I am supposed to lead the parade for the hillsborough concours on monday morning, chauffering the master of ceremonies. Jumped in the car this afternoon, turned the key to start, and other than the tach bouncing to max RPMs and back to zero, no reaction. No cranking of the starter…nothing. Tried it about 10 times with the same reaction. After about 5 minutes, I came back and turned the key and the engine turned over immediately and ran fine. Tried it about 30 more times and the problem kept recurring intermittently. The closest thing I can think of is that the ignition is acting as it would if you started the engine, turned it off, but did not return to the “O” position but instead only the “I” position. If you try to restart from that position, the starter won’t crank until you return all the way to “O” first. This is acting in a similar way. Any ideas?
Two things come to mind. First, are all your battery/starter cables tight and corrosion-free? Second, seems to me that your ignition switch is bad. Hope you get it sorted out for the parade.
Bad switch is my vote.
Hot wire the coil for the parade. Hope for the best…
Carl
Thank you for the response…battery is new, all contacts were cleaned and treated to dialectic grease before being tightened.
it may be the switch…
You need to check your starter solenoid in conjunction with your ign switch. To do so, attache a test light or meter to your solenoid 3rd wire. (check your manual) Have someone turn the key to “start” position, checking if your light or meter register proper voltage to the solenoid. If light goes on (or meter shows voltage), its the solenoid. If no light, check connections or get a new switch.
Popop
FWIW… I fought this for something like ten years. The once-and-for-all solution was putting a relay in the ignition line, so the pushbutton on my S1 did not have to carry the load. Had 12v going in to the pushbutton, 6.2 v. coming out of the button. The relay ended that problem. It was a simple matter of mounting the relay to the frame rail near the battery, then routing the line to/from the button to activate that relay to send the power to the starter.
“dialectic” grease seems a bit… metaphysical. dielectric grease, otoh…
Sounds like a switch fault to me. Bypass it with something else temporarily, and carry a fire extinguisher (or ask that the town fire engine follows directly behind you in the parade).
Briefly put you want one toggle switch to supply power to the ignition etc, and another momentary switch to turn the starter. Ideally you want a keyswitch for the ignition, or some other way to disable driving the car until you get the problem fixed properly.
Thanks everyone…I’ll look at it today…and yes, Andrew, dialectric!
Just a thought. Do check that your earth connections are good. On my V12 the battery earth was connected to the bulkhead and the combination of paint and corrosion meant that this became intermittent. Also check the engine earth strap which is connected to the body at entrance to the transmission tunnel.
Thanks…it probably didn’t help that i started a new thread here… . I’ve been struggling with ignition problems for several years, and have done everything from replacing (i) starter; (ii) battery; (iii) starter relay; (iv) ballast resistor; (v) coil; (vi) HT lead; (vii) distributor cap; (viii) rotor; (ix) re-opus; (x) clean and treat with dialectric grease all grounds; an d(xi) replace all plugs and plug wires. I tried a new ignition about a year back and at least the symptoms I was experiencing then did not improve. More recently I heat shrink wrapped the ignition wires to avoid bleed – it did a great job pending replacement of the ignition harness.
Well,…i made it through the parade. Car started and ran the mile or so it had to run at 2 mph all without overheating. Whew! At the end of the parade, parked the car for 20 mins., then went to start up and got 10 no cranks before it turned over. Whew, again! Now if only I can replicate enough to get a read on what is happening.
Another thought, since I occasionally have a similar problem on my SII Etype.
When cranking fails using the ignition key start position, check the (+) battery wire temperature with your hand between the battery and the connection point. If hot or very warm, this indicates a connection resistance along the wire route to the starter.
Popop