Land Rover 90 200 Tdi Wont Start?

Hi,

I have recently bought a Land Rover 90 1990 with a 200 Tdi fitted. It was starting and running okay. Then the battery ran down, it wouldnt start only click. This was always a battery fault and would start off a jump. I was doing this one day until it suddenly went dead. No clicking noise, no response. The lights come on at the ignition. But no crank, clicking or anything. Im guessing its an electrical fault? what is the most likely thing that needs replacing or i need to do? im no mechanic.

Sam

sjpullin said:

Hi,

I have recently bought a Land Rover 90 1990 with a 200 Tdi fitted. It was starting and running okay. Then the battery ran down, it wouldnt start only click. This was always a battery fault and would start off a jump. I was doing this one day until it suddenly went dead. No clicking noise, no response. The lights come on at the ignition. But no crank, clicking or anything. Im guessing its an electrical fault? what is the most likely thing that needs replacing or i need to do? im no mechanic.

Sam

Click to expand...

Flip your bonnet up and locate the starter motor down the right hand side of the engine. Check that the live feed from the battery and the earth lead from the solenoid to the actual starter motor are not touching eachother. The plastic coating / shielding may have worn through. I had this exact problem the other day. It would not click, nor would it respond. I slackened the nut on the live feed and moved it around so that it wasn't touching the negative / ground wire. Problem solved. It still sounds like you've got a battery issue. What happens if you try to jump start it from a running vehicle at the moment? The same thing?

-Pos

Thanks, ill have a look and try that. Was just weird how after clicking which was just a battery issue it suddenly went dead. Same thing still happens if i jump it ive got an industrial starter and that wont do it so must be an electrical fault somewhere. Yeh the battery is also **** because i dropped it and half the acid came out, still works just about but this is a different issue.

Cheers for the suggestion.

No problem. Bear in mind that I used two jump start kits last week, neither of which delivered enough amps to kick the engine over, both of them fully charged. When the battery is totally flat you wont even get a click from the solenoid on the starter. I'd suggest that you top the battery cells up with de-ionised water to help the chemical reaction / energy transfer out a little. But yeah, if jump leads from another vehicle don't work, there's an eletcrical problem somewhere, more than likely a short, or a poor earth. Saying that, have you tried bypassing the battery and the battery leads? Connect the positive terminal from your friends car directly to the securing nut on the starter solenoid (where the live cable is fastened) and one to the engine block - that will (or should) rule out a direct starter problem.

Oh and welcome to the forum!

-Pos

Haven't tried that...will give it a go tommorow.
Thanks again

No problem. It's winter don't forget, so anything that's about to break or drop off your landy will do so around about now, when it's ****ing it down, freezing cold and dark 15 hours out of the day.

-Pos

If there is a short in the starter motor leads you will sure know about it very rapidly ass the huge amount of current flowing will cause all the lights etc to go out/dim.........

If its not clicking then the solonoid is not enguaging. As you have been having some starting issues for some time i suspect that the main problem may be that your starter motor is on its way out and drawing a large amount of current which has now worn out the solonoid as well.

The other thing to check (which commonly occurs) is the engine earthing strap (i.e. the cable that connects the engine to the body of the car. This commonly gets worn away by things hitting it from underneath (mud, rocks etc etc) and as it gets thinner causes more heating in the cable and so it just burns through after a while.

next time you try and start it the current goes down the hand break cable and that then melts any your landy rolls off down a hill - or the outer casing melts and you are lucky

If the earthing start is intact you may find it helpfull to remove the starter motor and clamp it (tightly) in a wooden vice and apply jump cables to it to test it - BE CAREFULL ASI IT HAS A HUGE AMOUNT OF TORQUE !!!!!!!