[SiR]

Hi chaps,

Just a quick update.

Having put my thermals on, I was in the process of checking everything over when I noticed that the spade connection on top of the starter was a lot looser than I had previously thought.

I've crimped it closed and refitted it and so far all has been fine for the past few days.

Hopefully that's fixed it - I think a combination of the garage splitting the connectors to change the clutch and then me doing the same to replace the contacts in the solenoid must have opened the spade fitting up a little.

Cheers for the help!

 

[SiR]

Thanks chaps - I heard back from Carl Dawes from whom I bought the solenoid rebuild kit and he wonders if I tightened the contacts correctly when I rebuilt it. I'm pretty sure I did but it's also a consideration.

Check battery connections are tight.

Check earth to slam panel
Check earth to gearbox/chassis
Check little spade on the top of the starter
Check live to the starter.

All above can give same symptoms. Starter contacts are almost always the cause. Brushes are generally reliable but not impossible for it to be them.

I've already checked the battery connections and also cleaned the spade conector on the top of the starter motor with wire wool - I'll give the rest a check over and see what's what.

Cheers for now!

 

[SiR]

Bad news.... Got into the car this evening after work and it turns out I've not fixed it!

I could hear the solenoid engage but the engine didn't turn over. Then I tried to start it again.... nothing. It eventually started after a few attempts and a good few knocks on the side of the starter motor housing.

D'ya reckon it's the motor brushes?

 

[SiR]

In my case the hole was very small (and probably mostly plugged by what was rubbing it away). I noticed no difference in running after repairing it.

I think it's made quite a difference to my car - the hole was about an inch long across the top of one of the ribs in the pipe. Repairing it has meant that there's more grunt under 2,000RPM with the power appearing earlier in the rev-range.

BTW, from the discussion above, I did test the car up to and over 4,000RPM and it revs happily (then noisily) over 4,000 so I reckon that the MAF sensor is probably OK and the problem on the intake pipe was actually causing the symptoms I was describing.

 

[SiR]

Cheers for the help and advice - I had time today to get the starter out and swap over the parts and it all seems to be OK.

I must say that the Haynes was pretty useless, I'm guessing that the manual doesn't cater my particular car (a 2001 TD saloon) but it was trying to get me to remove things that I didn't have to (or in the case of the wheel arch liner, didn't exist) and also completely failed to tell me that the bottom starter motor retaining bolt screws into the motor from the engine side.

The funniest thing was that the only picture that related to the TD was of some bloke lifting the motor off the gearbox (with the engine removed for clarity) which was completely superfluous - why not show where that hidden bolt was?!

Anyway, the other news is that with the air box off the car, I noticed that there was a hole in the air intake pipe between the MAF sensor and the turbo, where it had rubbed against a metal bracket. I fixed the hole with tape and cable ties and also made-good the bracket with a bit of old Daimler coolant hose, and the 'turbo lag' seems to have reduced considerably. I'll get another plastic pipe on order and swap it out.

All in all a good couple of hour's work.

 

[SiR]

Thanks Dan - it's a 2001 car so no worries there.

I'll give it a try up to Newcastle tomorrow. TBH I don't tend to push it above about 4k but I can't work out if that's because iit won't go there or if I just don't push it that hard.

I'll find out tomorrow.

 

[SiR]

The turbo lag is probably a duff maf sensor rather than actual turbo lag. The turbo on them is pretty small. (smaller than the prima).

Interesting - it basically has nothing to give under about 1,500 revs, then as you approach 2,000 you get a nice surge of power until about 4,000. Does that sound like a duff MAF? If so, I'll get one of those on order too

If you want it to go faster you know where my website is

I'd love to but unfortunately I've been banned from giving it any performance-enhancing mods by the missus (whose car it is). She prefers reliability and fuel economy, yada, yada, yada.....!

 

[SiR]

Yeah, I've seen that rot on other 45s and our old 214 before it had to go due to HGF! I took the plastic sill trim off in the summer and Waxoyled the metal seam that it covers, along with the entire rear wheel arch area and along the sills. Hopefully that'll ward it off for a good while longer. Annoyingly our 45 doesn't have the Rover Automatic Floorpan Oiling system that the S-Series Maestro is fitted with so I've had to rust-proof the underneath of it as well, haha.

I perhaps should have said new oil and filter every 5k miles - it does quite a lot of short journeys due to commuting so the oil gets a bit of a hammering. The engine is a beaut though, doesn't use any oil between changes and once you learn how to deal with the turbo lag pulls like a train.

I've just ordered the repair kit from the seller linked to in your How-To article so once it's taken us to Newcastle and back this weekend I'll sort it out.

Cheers for now...

 

[SiR]

Great news - thanks for the replies chaps!

There aren't many forums where technical queries are consistently solved in less than half of asking :-D

I'll get a kit as described - looks like a pretty straight forward job, especially with the photo tutorial. I recognise those hands!!!

I really enjoy driving the 45 - so we're going to hang on to it for as long as possible. I reckon we should get another 100k out of it fairly easily, it gets serviced every 5k miles and there's no corrosion anywhere. Great little car.

All the best for now!