Fast Marina Magazine

Hi. I'm new to this forum. I few weeks ago I became the owner of a 1976 Marina 1.8 HL auto, which seems to be a rare surviving variant - not that ANY Marina is common. It's a good car but not surprisingly has a few issues. In the coming weeks and months I may be back here seeking advice while I work through my snagging list. I owned a white Morris Marina 1.8 SDL auto in the eighties, KRB 158P, which I rated for years as being my best ever car, surpassing the Cortinas and Vivas owned before it. Back then of course I could get my parts from BL dealer Kennings - not any more!

If anyone could offer suggestions for this 'snag' I'd be grateful. It isn't really a problem as such, but to me it's a mind bender as I am no auto electrician. When the car is started on the key, sometimes the starter just goes 'click', and sometimes it turns the engine over. As I bought my Marina at auction, I got no tips from the previous owner. At first I just had to keep turning the key, hearing the 'click', until the engine finally turned and fired. Obviously such a problem demanded urgent attention and I checked the battery charge - ok - and was faced with going looking for bad earths around the starter motor. Until, that is, I found a button under the dash dangling on a bit of wire - which turned the engine over without the key! Every time! Now, if the starter goes 'click' on the key, I just reach under the dash with the ignition on and fire it up on the button!

As I said, I'm no auto electrician. Up to now I've had no time to trace the wiring (the obvious course of action to determine where the button is spliced in to a circuit) but if someone out there is more expert than me, would you say the 100% reliability of the starter button discounts any bad starter motor connections? I'm thinking faulty ignition switch /steering lock barrel. Has it ever been known for the ignition switch / steering lock barrel to develop a fault over time? My car is low mileage - genuine 27,300 miles to date. Cheers,
Mick.

Sounds like the previous owner didn't know what the fault was either. Can you see what leads the dangly wire is connected to exactly?

Thinking about the original fault for a minute, I think that the click will be the starter solonoid. From memory the Auto has a different arrangement to the manual starter motor circuit. Does it have the old fashioned starter solonoid under the bonnet on the offside wing?




Chris

If pressing the button engages starter, when It just goes click the starter and the solenoid are ok. I assume its wired direct to starter motor. Bypassing the Gearbox inhibitor switch, which I suspect the switch or its connections to be your fault. Next time it does it try wiggling the gear lever both in park and neutral to see if starter will engage.
Dave

Do you know I hate it when I write something then it gets lost? Just spent 15 mins explaining my wiring and it went into cyberspace lost forever! Yes, good suggestion wiggling the gear selector. Allegedly my car has had a 'new' inhibitor switch. There is an eBay invoice in the history folder and a grubby old inhibitor switch among a pile of parts that came with it.

I've traced some wiring now. It took me writing a post topic to get me to do it! And I don't like what I see. The usual nasty domestic terminal blocks and peeling tape. First, I think my solenoid is mounted piggy back on the starter motor. The history folder also refers to a new starter motor 2-3 years ago. The dangly push button has a purple wire that goes through a small hole in the bulkhead, and a red wire that I lose over the heater ducting. However, under the bonnet, the purple wire is joined to a brown wire via the terminal block, and the brown wire goes to the battery live side direct. A red wire comes out of the bulkhead through a grommet with I think some outer cable sheaths (maybe for the throttle and choke but I didn't trace those) and part way is joined via another terminal block to a thin white and red wire. This thin white and red wire is then soldered to a thick white and red wire, the latter being a proper part of the car in the wiring loom, and the join is made, now I've peeled the tape away, by someone whittling away the outer insulation of the thick wire mid-run, to expose the copper conductor, then soldering the end of the thin wire to it. The thick white and red wire seems to go, as part of the loom, to the thing I think is my solenoid on the starter motor. Which would make sense. Permanent live direct to solenoid via a push button. The history folder refers to a starter button being added under the bonnet, presumably to aid servicing adjustments, but it isn't there, so it is reasonable to assume, I guess, the previous owner, unable to cure his starter issues, resorted to extending his servicing aid to a position under the dash for when he couldn't start the car on the key. It would seem the steering column ignition switch wiring is totally unaffected by the bodgery. Now, hopefully I can submit this statement......

I stand by my original diagnosis as the inhibitor switch curcit is at fault connected to a brown wire is a perminant unfused live Highly Dangerous fire hazard!!!!
Dave

I don't like it either. Every time I buy an old car that has been 'carefully' looked after it is full of bodgery and cut corners. I'm hoping this Marina is a keeper but obviously I've got to work through it as time allows. Right now the battery is disconnected because one of the terminals has one of those screw knobs you take away, cutting off power, so while it is standing idle it should be safe. I suppose if I have to keep the starter button in the short term, until or unless I can resolve the inhibitor issue, I should fit an inline fuse of appropriate rating. On the other hand if I can get the car to start by moving the selector from P to N, or just run it up and down the gate back to P, then maybe I can take the button out and tidy up the wiring.

Thanks for raising the fire risk issue. I can identify shabby rewiring work I don't like, thinking about the consequences of an overload without a fuse in circuit didn't occur to me.

Had a look on my wiring diagram makes no mention of inhibitor switch but thick white red is correct colour for starter trip on British wiring. not sure if a starter relay was used on marina but if has got one inhibitor switch usually switches it so earth so starter trip works it may be wired directly through trip wire you will have to check wire colour at switch and poss temporary bypass it to see if fault goes away but beware it will start in gear then
Dave

Does the car sometimes jerk and stutter intermittently? The reason I ask is I had a Ford Escort that did that and no garage could find what it was until the lock barrel gave up the ghost and was changed. Turned out it was the ignition switch. The tiny bearings and copper plates inside had ground away making intermittent contact.

Hi.
I have had several auto Marinas with the same problem you describe.
There seems to be an issue with the circuitry that runs to the inhibitor switch via several multi pin connectors, such that not enough power is available for the starter solenoid to operate correctly.
My fix has always been to mount a simple relay just beside the ignition coil, which the original circuit is perfectly happy to operate. The relay then passes the heavier current for the solenoid.
If fitted - the connector between the wiring loom and the engine loom in the same area is often a potential trouble spot - so I connect from the relay direct to the solenoid and bypass that connector.
It can be made very tidy and is not glaringly obvious as a non-standard arrangement.

Kilroy wrote:Hi.
I have had several auto Marinas with the same problem you describe.
There seems to be an issue with the circuitry that runs to the inhibitor switch via several multi pin connectors, such that not enough power is available for the starter solenoid to operate correctly.
My fix has always been to mount a simple relay just beside the ignition coil, which the original circuit is perfectly happy to operate. The relay then passes the heavier current for the solenoid.
If fitted - the connector between the wiring loom and the engine loom in the same area is often a potential trouble spot - so I connect from the relay direct to the solenoid and bypass that connector.
It can be made very tidy and is not glaringly obvious as a non-standard arrangement.

Wow. Right. This seems to be hitting the nail on the head. You see I hadn't actually suspected the inhibitor switch (not having waggled the selector lever so far to see if that works...) because I knew someone had replaced it. And lack of current would fit the symptoms because when you get a flat battery, do you not very often get that 'click' but no engine rotation? Thanks for this. As per my previous post, I do have a spot of bother 'seeing' how to wire things electrically or trace faults. So when you say 'original circuit'...where are you taking a wire from, to operate your relay? And where do you tap into the circuit to take full power through the closed relay to the solenoid? Have you had the circuit fused when you've done this before? I am assuming somewhere you are wiring up to that thick white wire with the red stripe that on my car, someone has formed a 'T' junction on by soldering in the thin wire to my push button.

Morris McKinnon wrote:Does the car sometimes jerk and stutter intermittently? The reason I ask is I had a Ford Escort that did that and no garage could find what it was until the lock barrel gave up the ghost and was changed. Turned out it was the ignition switch. The tiny bearings and copper plates inside had ground away making intermittent contact.

No. I haven't made many journeys so far but when it is running it doesn't display any stuttering or jerking symptoms. Thanks

david painter wrote:Had a look on my wiring diagram makes no mention of inhibitor switch but thick white red is correct colour for starter trip on British wiring. not sure if a starter relay was used on marina but if has got one inhibitor switch usually switches it so earth so starter trip works it may be wired directly through trip wire you will have to check wire colour at switch and poss temporary bypass it to see if fault goes away but beware it will start in gear then
Dave

Trying to remember back to my auto Marina in the 80s, I always thought that if I'd forgotten to put the car into P and tried to start it, which thankfully I didn't do very often, when I turned the key there was nothing. The dash lit up, but there was zero input from the starter circuit. Obviously I haven't tried to start my present Marina incorrectly this way, which is why I'm trying to remember back while sat at my computer indoors. So if I'm right, Kilroy's diagnosis seems spot on. My inhibitor switch might be working okay, but there's a power drop somewhere in the circuitry to it. Oh well, something else to try tomorrow. Try starting in gear! (With the key...not the button!)

Pardon the image quality - but here is what I do.




I like to maintain the original wiring colours so it is easier to follow by somebody else.
Where the red/white wire from the car side of the loom reaches the engine bay connector I cut it off and attach it to the coil of the relay.
The other relay coil connection simply earths (black wire) to the same screw which mounts the relay to the body of the car - I use the existing screw that holds the wiring loom clip.
At this point you should be able to make the relay click in and out by operating the starter position on the ignition key.

This leaves two connections on the relay which are just switching contacts.
I run a brown wire and a red/white wire from these to the starter.
Brown wire connects to the same terminal as the heavy lead from the battery so is 12 volt positive.
Red/white wire replaces the original red/white from the engine side of the engine bay connector which gets cut off.
This arrangement bypasses any current flowing through the engine bay connector - which can often be seen to have melted on these very wires.

Cheers.

Thank you Kilroy. I think I can make sense of that. Obviously I still need to do some detective work to establish for certain that my starting problem is the same one and at the very least in the short term, seeing as David has highlighted the fire risk with the existing setup, I need to make that safer somehow. But from what you say with your greater experience with auto Marinas than I suspect many people have in the UK, it sounds like you've diagnosed my problem. Cheers, Mick.

Kilroy

What relay do you use - 30 amp, 40 amp etc.? I don't know how many amps a starter motor will draw.


Chris