You just won't believe this one!

[Am Piobaire]

My old vinyl auto shifter handle finally karked it so i rang around via the Yellow pages and managed to track a wooden one down in Melbourne for $75 AUD. I thought, ripper! Anyway, it arrived in the post today and was waiting for me after work. I removed the old one and worked out how it all fitted together and after a bit of fiddling about I got the new wooden one installed and it looks good. It seems to work ok as well. I thought I would start the engine and try the shifter through the P R D N 1 2 to make sure everything works OK. Hit the starter and all I got was clicking noises. There was enough juice in the battery to work the headlights and the horn - but I took it out and put it on charge just to make sure - but it seems the battery was ok. Must be the starter solenoid - can't think of anything else.

I can't believe how changing the shifter knob can stuff up the starter solenoid - to make matters worse, I was going to go down to Bowral this weekend for a Ball - that's a good 3 hours drive (or approx 250 km) from here and it looks like my car is knackered - won't even get out of the driveway. c'est la vie

I'll end up going in my girlfriend's Mondeo.

Have any list members had a similar problem? It's probably co-incidental, but then again, you just never know

Andrew

White 88 525 - slightly knackered!
White 91 K100 LT

[winfred]

double check that you are not having problems with the neutral safety switch, foot on brake while holding the key in start position while moving the shifter through it's travel, if it starts you may of disturbed the switch somehow

[George M]

ditto to what Winfred stated...98% certainty when you had it apart you altered the adjustment of the no-start switch which is a safety switch to keep the car from starting if in gear.
George

[Tiger]

He said he got the clicking noise... with neutral safety switch bad, you don't get clicking noise right? If so, I would probably suspect the fusible link.

[winfred]

but was it the click of the solonoid?


He said he got the clicking noise... with neutral safety switch bad, you don't get clicking noise right? If so, I would probably suspect the fusible link.

[632 Regal]

has to be, he said he had to mess with it quite a bit to get it on, anything could have happened.

[DanDombrowski]

If you jump the terminal on the starter solenoid from the constant power with the key on, you'll get the car to start and run temporarily.

See my BMW? Yeah, its so special, I have to start it with this special key (hold up screwdriver)

[Am Piobaire]

I tried hitting the starter with the shifter up and down the range and there was nothing as you would expect with the safety switch - I got the clicking noises with it in just Park and Neutral, which lead me to believe it was the solenoid.

The fiddling about with getting the shifter knob back on was mainly working out how the white plastic thingy fitted together. I can't see how I disturbed anything. Unfortunately, at the time it was dark and getting late and didn't have the time to spend a few hours troubleshooting, and as I mentioned I am going away today - so I left it until Sunday when I'm back.

I have heard stories of where you just give the solenoid unit a whack with a spanner and it sometimes fixes the problem - this might be ok on an old clunker, but not my preciousssss.

Andrew

[BigD]

I have heard stories of where you just give the solenoid unit a whack with a spanner and it sometimes fixes the problem - this might be ok on an old clunker, but not my preciousssss.

Andrew

That's an old trucker's trick when you've been cranking too long and the starter seems to die. If you bash it hard, you can get it to keep cranking. I read somewhere that BMW starters don't like to work for longer than 5 seconds, but I imagine they're all like that.