Offroad-Express

Hi team,

Just got back from a couple of days with xj at the Ngaroma Block in the Pureora State Forest> We stayed at the camp ground set up by The King Country 4wd Club, absolutley marvellous job. Really well set up. Anyway a couple of small issues arose and was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions

Our 3.0 V6 Paj appeared to be having starting issues. Every now and then it appeared the battery was flat and would only just turn the engine over, until this afternoon, it has managed to start. This afternoon it actually failed to turn the engine over. At first I thought the battery was on the blink, it is 3 months old, but I thought it may be a lemon or something. I checked it by flicking the head lights on one of these slow starting times but the head lights didn't go dim at all. The other thing is this happens every now and then. The last time this afternoon, it failed to start, I flicked the headlights on and tried again and it started as normal. Go figure. Someone has suggested a relay or possible starter motor solenoid. Has anyone come across this or does anyone have any thoughts.
Battery is fine, connections on the battery have been checked and are fine. Battery has liquid above the cells so no probs there.

Any thoughts or suggestions to remedy would be appreciated.

Cheers
Rod

RJ wrote:Hi team,

Just got back from a couple of days with xj at the Ngaroma Block in the Pureora State Forest> We stayed at the camp ground set up by The King Country 4wd Club, absolutley marvellous job. Really well set up. Anyway a couple of small issues arose and was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions

Our 3.0 V6 Paj appeared to be having starting issues. Every now and then it appeared the battery was flat and would only just turn the engine over, until this afternoon, it has managed to start. This afternoon it actually failed to turn the engine over. At first I thought the battery was on the blink, it is 3 months old, but I thought it may be a lemon or something. I checked it by flicking the head lights on one of these slow starting times but the head lights didn't go dim at all. The other thing is this happens every now and then. The last time this afternoon, it failed to start, I flicked the headlights on and tried again and it started as normal. Go figure. Someone has suggested a relay or possible starter motor solenoid. Has anyone come across this or does anyone have any thoughts.
Battery is fine, connections on the battery have been checked and are fine. Battery has liquid above the cells so no probs there.

Any thoughts or suggestions to remedy would be appreciated.

Cheers
Rod

not much help on your problem but just a quick note on testing your battery, I test about 300 batteries a week in my line of work the only way to properly test a battery's charge is to test it's ability to hold a charge under load (IE 12.34V+ @ 20amp draw for 30 seconds is normal for the starting batteries I test) batteries *can* show good charge on a static test (IE voltmeter shows 12.5v at rest but drop to -9V on load and 9V wont crank a motor over! ) the trick is to test your battery WHILE your cranking it .. lemon batteries and batteries about to fail will do so under load .. usually trying to turn over a honking great motor!!

also pays to grab and keep handy a hydrometer they a $5.95 from supercheap and will let you know the condition of your cells in a few seconds anything less than in the green means your battery is on the way out.

the symptoms because they a intermittent doesn't point towards your battery however these two quick tests will rule it out
i once had the same symptoms with my old triumph Herald many many years ago tracked it down to the windings in the starter motor where shot, new starter motor and away she went.

*edit* check your earth leads to your engineblock .... just remembered my surf had a starting issue the earth strap to the engine was corroded and had about 3 strands of wire left,

Also check the main lead to the starter - on mine it wasn't tight at the starter solinoid and would sometimes just click but everything read fine.

Also the earth straps from the battery can be dicky - the ones where the lead is melted over the cable - mine sometimes loses conection in there but I haven't got round to fixing it yet!

My Paj has gone through three starter solenoids in a year and i have to fix it again this week.. A product of the canterbury rivers i think.

Cheers everyone,

Will run through and check all the leads etc.
Hhhhmmm solenoid, that came up in another conversation to.