Help please. Intermittent fail.
Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2015 4:15 pm
I was warming up my Elan's engine to go for a run the other day when it suddenly quit. I restarted it and a short while later it quit again. After that nothing worked, no starter, even the window switches which are live always. As I was unsure of the connections on the back of the ignition switch I thought it was a faulty switch. Having subsequently removed the switch I discovered that the two terminals at position 1 (+12V and the cable to the window switches) are in fact common. Meanwhile I rigged up a toggle ignition switch and a momentary switch for the starter and tried, today, to run by bypassing the ignition key switch. I got the engine started, switched it off and tried to restart - nothing. Everything dead. I have 12.5V at the NU cable that supplies the ignition switch and even moving it around I never lost the 12V so I don't believe the supply voltage is bad. At one point I thought the fault might be in the ignition warning lamp circuit but disconnecting that didn't resolve the problem.
I ran the following checks:
All switches off - +12V @ NU cable
White lead supplying the fuse box connected (electric fuel pump supplied from fusebox) - voltage at NU 1.6V
White leads supplying ignition coil and ignition warning lamp respectively connected - voltage at NU 1.3V
Start (White/Red) cable connected - voltage at NU 0V
Please note that nothing was working in any of the above states but those were the voltage readings I logged.
Interestingly when I got no response the other day I left it alone and did get an early response today but later got nothing.
It certainly seems like a bad earth somewhere but I'm stymied on where to start looking. Has anyone seen anything like this before - and resolved it?
I ran the following checks:
All switches off - +12V @ NU cable
White lead supplying the fuse box connected (electric fuel pump supplied from fusebox) - voltage at NU 1.6V
White leads supplying ignition coil and ignition warning lamp respectively connected - voltage at NU 1.3V
Start (White/Red) cable connected - voltage at NU 0V
Please note that nothing was working in any of the above states but those were the voltage readings I logged.
Interestingly when I got no response the other day I left it alone and did get an early response today but later got nothing.
It certainly seems like a bad earth somewhere but I'm stymied on where to start looking. Has anyone seen anything like this before - and resolved it?