Mk2 1.8 HL Automatic update

[Kilroy]

I have forgotten whether or not you had fitted an extra relay to the starter circuit.?
Either the starter solenoid is faulty or it is not getting enough voltage. Usual cause of low voltage is bad connections inside the inhibitor switch on the auto.
I had several starters do this on autos, and fitting a relay in the engine bay allowed full voltage to the starter solenoid while also giving the inhibitor switch and easy time of it by only having to operate a relay.

[mickthefitter]

No, I never got around to doing the mod you suggested. I got overwhelmed by the other running issues the car has. What is happening in the video is that I have relocated the starter button that was 'hot wired' under the dash, so I can operate it under the bonnet, which I believe was the original intention of whoever carried out the mod. So when I'm pressing the button, the starter solenoid is getting 12V direct from the battery, bypassing the inhibitor switch and ignition barrel.

[mickthefitter]

I was also able to get a bit of a look at the inhibitor switch while the car was up on axle stands today, although it didn't tell me a lot. All the connections are aftermarket crimp connections and they aren't obviously hanging off or badly made. The car wasn't really high enough off the ground for me to reach where they were and muck around. I was looking at the end of my day of messing around with it and the light was going. I can't tell just by looking at the switch whether its a genuine one or the aftermarket type people say is no good, but the car's previous owner printed off and put the eBay listing that he bought in the car's history folder, and the listing claims the switch is 'genuine'.

[mickthefitter]

Well here we are, the thing came out blinking into the sunlight (yesterday, actually) first time since November.




So this picture is from today, when I lifted the car to clean the earths to the starter motor from underneath, and eventually I took the motor off from underneath. Yesterday I thought I'd start with something simple, like fit the new choke cable and refit the steering column cowl.

If I could rename this thread, I'd call it 'MARINA II - THE FRUSTRATION CONTINUES'. Because it feels like a Star Wars epic.

Refit the steering column cowl eh? Nah. Left hand side with the cable fitted wouldn't bloody go in. Remember it was broken when I took it out? And previously glued? I CANNOT get that half back in behind the wheel. Yeah, the manual says for cowl removal to change the choke cable, "Turn the steering wheel to the left and remove the right hand cowling, then remove the left hand cowling with the choke cable". Well the right hand bit came out with a bit of a squeeze, but the left one, no way. So then when I was at the dismantling stage, I turned the steering wheel to the right and I managed to squeeze the left cowling out, except a chunk fell out that had been broken off before by someone else. Then someone kindly offered to sell me a replacement.

But no way is it going back with the steering wheel in place. It doesn't want to know. I'm marking the chrome on the dashboard, even when I cover it with tape, and the back of the steering wheel - and risking breaking the cowling again.



So then I decided the wheel had to come off. Easy, yes? Loosen the nut, thump the back of the spokes, and off it comes. Done it many times before. Does 'MARINA II - THE AWAKENING' want to play? Does it hell. The nut in the middle of the steering wheel was so tight, I had to cut a piece of timber to wedge between the floor and the left hand spoke before I could loosen the nut. AND I needed an extension tube on my ratchet!



Then, naturally, the wheel wouldn't come off. Despite my best efforts, I nearly broke the indicator stalk by accidentally catching it while thumping. I even tried the technique that worked on the stuck wheel on my Mini (eventually) that of tapping the centre of the steering column with a drift, to try to shock the parts and break the taper. Except the Mini had a centre horn push and I needed a tube. I used a steel pipe fitting over the horn push contacts on that. NO such complication on the Marina. Did tapping the centre of the column help? No.

So...I went out looking for a puller of some sort. Halfords had a three leg puller that I decided wouldn't grip on the radiused edges on the back of my wheel, so I phoned up a motor factor in Mansfield I've used in the past - Fittapart. He said come and look, he might have something. So I went to Mansfield - at everyone else's home time - and what he'd got in mind was a wiper puller, that wasn't big enough for my wheel. Then I got offered two types of hub puller, and one looked promising. With that puller, a couple of long bolts, a handful of nuts and two thick penny washers, I headed back home. The job was over for Monday but I was keen to get that steering wheel off today with my new kit.



Was it plain sailing this morning? Is the Pope a Catholic? Well he is - but it wasn't plain sailing. How could it be? My M10 nuts and M10 bolts were not compatible. Nothing had been said when I picked them from the bins and placed them on the counter - in fact I'm sure I was guided towards the bin with the nuts I needed, and the only other M10 nuts I saw were flange nuts. So today I began by having to cut NEW THREADS in the bloody nuts I bought! They must have been Metric Fine - or badly cut. I can't say as they OBVIOUSLY looked like a fine thread, or that the re-threaded nuts look as though they've got two threads inside them.



So...then I got my contraption on the steering wheel. It fitted fairly well. It didn't slip off. Did it work? No. The bottom part of the plastic steering wheel hub starting to bend and risked breaking, and I managed to put a little dent in the middle of the steering wheel column with the jacking bolt. But the wheel didn't move.



So I gave up. For now.



And turned my attention to the non-working starter motor. A description of what I did and what I found there is written above. In short, earth leads cleaned, voltage checked in positive cables, that darned starter button taken from under the dash and put under the bonnet so I could activate the starter and listen to the clicks, and now the starter motor is off. Lucas, The Prince of Darkness. The prophecy is true.



I think I'll be on the phone to Earlpart in the morning. They list recon exchange starter motors for the Marina. I looked at Moss's website and Rimmer Bros, at MGB parts, just for fun, and the motors they offer look different. Mounting flange in relation to the pinion gear and solenoid all in the wrong places. I'm not wasting my time with MGB parts. Just to cap my day off, the heavens opened before I'd got my tools clear and before I'd got stuff out in the back yard, back in the shed, so tools got wet and so did the Marina, which had been dry all winter! So I spent about twenty minutes toweling its lifeless carcass down so it wasn't marinating while in the garage overnight.

What was that song by Lou Reed? Such a perfect day....

[mickthefitter]

Earlpart hadn't got any exchange recon starters on the shelf. They could have reconditioned mine, but in that case I'd used a W Whyatt and Son, auto electricians in Stapleford, in the past to recondition the dynamo on my Wolseley Hornet, so I've taken the starter motor there. They clamped it in a vice and stuck a battery on the terminals and nothing happened. They said either the armature has gone or there are no brushes. I checked the records in my history folder and this (probably original) starter motor was reconditioned in May 2013 at 25,103 miles. The car now has about 27,400 miles recorded. Must have been a good recon job....

[mickthefitter]

Here are today's results -

Steering wheel = 1 Mick = 0
Steering cowl = 0 Mick = 1

So, one additional puller later, from Screwfix. that I am intending to try to take back, as it was unsuitable, I was on the verge of drilling holes in my steering wheel, as close as possible to the wire frame of the horizontal spoke, and using my original puller with big washers behind the wheel, when I thought "I wonder if the left hand cowl will go back WITHOUT the choke cable in place?" Which meant undoing my previous work of nipping it up with the choke knob the right way up, fitting that fiddly switch for the dash 'choke' lamp...

So I undid my previous work and yes, with the choke dangling out of the left hand cowl, the damn thing snapped back into place.



Now all I had to do was get the choke cable nut back on the thread, tighten it up, get the switch back in the right place, tighten the little clamp on that, put the wires back on.....all though a little gap between the cowling and steering column with very little access and half working blind. I managed in the end, but it definitely didn't come off like that. I removed (as per the book) the left hand cowl complete with choke cable and took it out of the car. I love it when the manuals say "assembly is the reverse procedure for dismantling". NO IT ISN'T! Not always.



So, putting the right half of the cowl back is simples, yes? Well, yeah - because in the end I had THAT one in and out about a dozen times. Because when I fastened the single screw holding it to the steering column (versus the three screws holding the left half on) the two halves wouldn't pull together properly. When I took it apart, there was Blu Tack inside the cowl. I thought it was there to stop squeaking, but it now appears it was an attempt to keep the two halves of the cowl closed, although I didn't notice anything amiss from the outside before I took the cowl off (like the broken piece held in with superglue, for instance). I was considering using superglue plus activator myself to keep the cowl halves closed at the joint, then risk having to break them apart at a later date if I needed to separate them, then I decided the wobbly white nylon horizontal bar, fixed to the underneath of the steering column, to mount the cowl to, looked like THAT was the culprit keeping the cowl halves apart. Like it was too long. So I managed to shave about a mil and a half off it with a junior hacksaw.



...and hey presto, the two cowl halves pull down near perfectly.



So for 40 years that bit of plastic had been too long? It just doesn't make sense...

[MARINAMADBAZ]

That's the wrong starter motor for an auto
Shold have a 2m100 bigger stater for the auto,'s that's a standaRd 1.7/1.8 mj35 manual one u got there
I'll get a pic of an auto one for u
Barry

[MARINAMADBAZ]

I normally used to recline the front seat grab hood of the wheel 3 and 9 o clock potion and just keep pulling into u get it of the splines but it's bloody hard work barry

[mickthefitter]

I normally used to recline the front seat grab hood of the wheel 3 and 9 o clock potion and just keep pulling into u get it of the splines but it's bloody hard work barry

I'm probably not strong enough and haven't got enough bulk!

[mickthefitter]

That's the wrong starter motor for an auto
Shold have a 2m100 bigger stater for the auto,'s that's a standaRd 1.7/1.8 mj35 manual one u got there
I'll get a pic of an auto one for u
Barry

Okay, if that's true, that's certainly an interesting development in the world of past cack-handed bodgery applied to my Marina.

[mickthefitter]

I notice, Barry, that the MG starter motors are completely different to the Marina ones, in that the open end of the casting where the pinion gear is, is on the opposite side of the starter motor, or put it another way, if the motor was orientated to mesh with my flywheel, the solenoid would be underneath instead of on top. And I bet the mounting flange holes don't line up either. I found a used 2M100 on eBay, but same as what I thought when I looked at starter motors at Moss, ones for MGs don't fit. I find it puzzling that Lucas used the same model numbers for starter motors used in different applications, that aren't interchangeable.

The Haynes manual I got with the car, which only covers the 1.8, mentions the M418G starter and the M35J, but doesn't make any specific reference to starters for automatics. The Autobooks manual, which covers the 1.3 and 1.8, mentions the M218G, M35J and 2M100, and gives torque figures and applications. That book says the M418G is standard for the 1.3, the M35J is for cold climates on the 1.3, but the 2M100 is the ONLY starter given for the 1.8! Both books cannot be right.

Do you suppose there's any chance that BL used whatever starter motor they had to hand when my car came down the line in 1976? I've heard of things like that happening before. Such as, in the brochure I've got that covers the Mk2 Marina HL and GT, the HL steering wheel has plastic wood grain set in the steering wheel spokes, and the fake drilled alloy look is on the GT, yet my HL (and Steve Moss's I think) has the GT steering wheel. I assume they'd got no HL centre pads when they were building our cars!

[MARINAMADBAZ]

Pic's of starter differences as promised

]

Cheers barry

[MARINAMADBAZ]

All my 2.0 auto ital's have the 2m100 this is also the correct starter for the 1800 auto as well this is in my lucas starter motor book I'll get a pic of the page for you the manual starter will do the job but the 2m100 is a bigger starter to help with starting an auto.cheer's barry

[mickthefitter]

Thanks Barry. Yes that 'Autobooks' manual I have in my possession rates the 2M100 as having the highest torque. The used MG starter in my eBay watch list is this - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222432232059? ... EBIDX%3AIT

It is easy to see it is more or less a mirror image to the 2M100 you have. If you look at the photos with the solenoid lying on the same side, one motor has an open casting for the pinion gear and the other the closed side. I'm not familiar with MGBs but I can only assume they put the starter motor on the opposite side of the engine bay on those. Looking at the photos, it looks to me like the alloy castings are bespoke. I don't think it is a case of undoing a few screws and swiveling the casing around to suit a different car.

Now my motor is with the reconditioners, and with the likelyhood it won't cost me that much, it would be silly not to let them finish it and use it on the car. However now you've told me what it should be like, I can keep a look out for something better if it turns up.

[PHUQ]

I'd say that starter you have there has been played with (reconditioned or whatever) as the alloy casting has been painted- I've never seen that on an original one.

The main code on the starter refers to the motor itself if I remember rightly, there are numerous permutations of nose castings (solenoid position relative to where the ring gear engages) and gear wheels to go with that.

Mine failed (and locked solid) when the bronze bush fell out the very front of the shaft, allowing the shaft to rock and wedge itself with a thud. There's probably a thread on here from when I was playing hunt the starter- from memory the Marina one is common with very few others.

Well done on getting the steering column surround back on. I'm trying to remember how mine went on now- possibly I did the same as you with the choke but I can't remember it giving me much grief! Still, it's on now and fitted better than it ever has been by the looks of it.