Hey everyone.

This is a really stupid question, I know but how can I get my van cranking?

As you may or may not know, it has been sitting dead for about a year.
The problem with the engine is unknown to me.
Recently I pulled off the left carb & manifold(1800) to look for signs of metal etc. None. Anyway, I began to wonder if the problem was a horrible leak getting in between the inlet manifold and head. The studs aren't in the best shape so I used heaps of blue silicon.
I'm wondering if the engine suction sucked out a bit of the silicon allowing it to just suck air.

Anyway, I put the carb back on with loads more silicon to at least get a decent temporary seal.
Plopped the battery back in after a good charge.
Weak crank and then nothing. Argh!
Tried messing with the terminals a lot. They have always been a problem. No use. Wouldn't crank.

I don't know if it's a rooted battery or a bad connection. Either way, I just want to get some good solid cranking. If it starts I'd be over the moon, but if it doesn't at least I can hear it turning over so I can listen for the squeak.

I remembered that after I put the motor back in the cranking was pretty slow. Mostly because of the new rings .

Any suggestions on what I can do?

[Edited on 10/6/2005 by General_Failure]

My mate has the same prob with his bug. The engine won't turn at all, even when being towed at 60ks and shoving into 1st. Just makes a big thumping noise for a few seconds and stops.

Think its ceased. Yet to find out. I will have to keep an eye out on this thread, just incase something comes up to help my mate.

Got stuffed after my mate forgot to replace the oil he took out, and stalling it majorly a few times (it was the lil' kids that stalled it). Pretty funny and stupid, but my mate learnt his lesson and now remembers.

Have you got an earth strap from the gearbox to the body?

Yes, I do have that earth strap. I had to think. You think it may be a bit dodgy? I haven't touched much mechanically since the last failure.

And mynameischris88, thanks for that, but I can still turn the engine by hand. No grinding. Only thing is it tends to snap back if I let go of the shifter I'm using to turn the engine. But that's just due to compression.
The 2nd last failure was a dropped valve seat. It jammed the engine totally. It was a real pig to get the jammed piston/cylinder off.

The earth strap is just as important to be in good nick and clean as the battery terminals and each end of the main battery leads. It as we all know, completes the circuit.

The other thing may be the starter is dudding out?

Or maybe the battery is not holding a charge?

My personal feelings are leaning towards the battery.
A dead battery ahouldn't register as fully charged for a while when I first put it on the battery charger should it?

The starter I think is okay. Its teeth aren't the best but it turns fine. It kind of slowly fell out without me realising it. The cranking got worse until it went whirrrr. I looked under it and the starter was hanging out. Shoved it in, hand tightened the bolt I could reach and went home. Fixed it properly there.
Did that ages ago though.
I'll have to check the earth strap for physical connection and completeness.

The deadish battery may still have 12V but not the CCA left in it to crank the motor. It may be worthwhile just grabbing a battery out of another car around and trying it just to see if that makes a difference

This will be fun.

The secondary battery in the kombi usually holds a good charge. Sometimes for some reason its current falls flat. but for the most part it's good. The orientation of the battery is wrong and the battery cables don't quite reach.

Then there's the EA. I'm scared to death of doing anything with that. The EA EFI computer is like antique crystal. Expensive to replace and fragile.
I think I'll give the secondary battery a charge tomorrow and see what I can do. Hopefully it still works. Everything got damaged in the shipping container. Even the skylight of the van got broken. There was a lot of panel damage too. grumble.

Other than that. I dunno. Been tempted to bail up the person with the marshall batteries truck that lives a couple of doors away from me.

Those thingies with the built in battery, charger, cables and cigarette lighter socket. Can they provide a starting current? I don't have one, but I have always thought they looked almost useful.

do your dash lights go dim when you try to turn the motor over?
try taking the plugs out and giving it a spin with no compression.
I wouldn't PF around with jump starting it from the f#^d either, disconect the earth lead in the shitebox f&*d and use jumper leads onto your battery.
Or take it out completely and use it to jump start yours
if that fails disconnect your battery and use the other one on it's own
Make sure you use nice thick cables to take the drop in voltage and dn't crank the thing until the cables melt!

[Edited on 6-6-2005 by lost]

Beforehand they look fine. When I start cranking they go dim. Well, they pretty much go out completely. When I stop cranking (well, trying to) the lights stay pretty dim until I turn it off and leave it for a minute. That's why I think it's the battery this time.

I think I'll leave the EA as the last option. If something happens to that I'm stuffed. Have no $$$. Can't even afford a compression gauge atm. Actually going to ask if any local forum members will let me borrow theirs. Once I can crank the engine that is. I've been wanting one for a long time, but it seems a little excessive getting one to check 2 cylinders.

Under normal circumstances I would take out all 4 sparkies to do a free spin. One of my sparkplug holes has a stuffed helicoil. It's not getting undone until the next time I drop out the motor. It took me half an hour to get the thread started with the head off the motor, in front of me. It's just the top of the helicoil has come adrift. The rest is fine.

So, new battery time. ouch.

Woops. But that was before I had the luv for vee dubs and before new anything about em'.

It was actually the bush bashing in that vee dub that started my craving/luv for em. Then I met the buggy.
:thumb

I didn't even know that it had a boxer 4-cylinder engine then. I knew nothing about em. That was the old days where I used to luv the Torana, but thats gone now. lol

Atleast I know not to do it anymore. Hmm, actually, I can't really remember what gear I put it in. Cause when the car was working, it seemed to cruise fine in 1st gear at that same speed we did when towing. But yeah, it couldn't have been 60 if that was the case, (60 in 1st, phhh [startslaughing at his own stupidity]). It probably seemed that speed cause of the movement of the grass passing us by in the paddock.

Cause when you cruise at 60 on a small street, the objects on the side of ya seem to pass faster then on a high way, cause its less open. And seeing its grass we were driving on (thick grass), it seemed faster than what it really was. the speedo was already stuffed, so I dunno.

hey tristan sounds like the battery to me man....
however had the slow cranking thing happening with my old kombi when i tried to start it for the first time and it was beacuse of the dirty and corroded terminals and earth strap...

give them all a good clean up with sandpaper and their contact points on the body and chassis, and also where the battery cables go into the terminals... clean there too...

good luck man...

battery or terminals for sure. When we had our engine out we wanted to see if it ran before we put it in, we used jumper leads from the battery to the starter but they got real hot and wouldnt give enough power. We got another set of leads and it started first go. But if your lights are going dim when u start and stayin dim then its definantly a dead battery.

Good luck, let us know how it goes

battery. bah.
Didn't get to do it today. Was a very busy one. Re-reg'd the EA today. Had to go to broadmeadows to do it.

well, tomorrow I'll pull the aux battery out and give it a charge. Just have to figure out gow to get the leads to reach. Bloody left-handed battery.

I just thought of a lame way to test an earth strap. You need a test lamp. Have one side on the tranny, the other on the body.
By rights, it should only light dimly or not at all if the earth strap is good. If it's bad the light will shine brightly.
Probably obvious and been used since time immemorial by everyone, but at least I thought of it on my own.

Is there a simple way of testing the amperage of a car battery? I'm not talking figures. Just good/bad.

Use a multimeter to test charge.

Also jumpstarting of chipped and computered cars,, was told by an mechanic that you can still jumpstart a second car wth then but make sure you run you earth to a metal connection point on the MOTOR. dont know why it should make any difference but that what e said. possibly worth asking a mechanic douwn your way to clarify.

hope you get the engine back to dakdak status.

does anybody kniow why they say not to jumpstart Injected cars?

cos of the risk of voltage spikes frying the computer...

this happens when a higher voltage system is connected to a lower voltage one i ie- good car to bad car....

to lower risks, have good cars accessories turned on to suck up some juice.. ie headlights a/c hi beams radio bla bla bla...

just in case no-one knew...

In 14 years of panel beating I never disconnected a battery unless I had to take it out of the vehicle. I have MIG welded, spot welded, jump started and dropped spanners across probably over 3 thousand cars in that time. Never damaged a computer or diode.

I blew up a phone transponder in an XF panlevan back in about 1990 by putting the wrong lead back on the battery after the tradesman made me disconnect it to do a weld.

Was at a test in a workshop where they showed a VN Commodore computer hanging out of a kickpanel attached to the car. They welded a bead of MIG to the casing of the computer and then started it up.

They are not as fragile as you think.

Thanks for all the info everyone. Much appreciated.

I've never had any troubles welding with the battery connected either. I think the only time you could damage electrics with one is if you make the welder a part of the circuit.

Still have to pull out the other battery to charge it. It's hard finding time for that sort of thing.

A car battery would destroy a multimeter if you attempt to check current with it. Voltage can be checked though.

I've never fully understood neeing to connect the negative to the body or motor. I guess there's a reason, but I don't know it. I thought ground was ground.

After I give it a kick, I hope that the engine goes dak dak instead of chug, squeak, chug, squeak. That'd be awesome. If not, then I guess it's time to pull out the motor.

i sort of had the same problem with my 74 kombi, i connected the battery and then turned the key but it wouldnt crank and the 2 red lights were dimming on and off, luckily my dad suggested to fully clean the ground connection and positive connection with a fine file (not the battery ones) this immidiately made a huge difference i could now see the bare metal which is what you want,

also make sure your ground wire is on bare metal on your body maybe scrape it a bit, once they are all nice and clean give them a slight smearing of vasaline which helps conduct the signal, i did this and it started straight away and the red lights were bright as anything!

hope this helps

I'll give that a try too. Thanks for that. The terminals look okay. Not amazing. I'll give them a good clean. Still not sure about the battery though. It'd always lose charge eventually.
I have to move in something like 3 months. Gotta get it running!

Time to get to it......:alien connect the battery and turn the ignition ON.Get someone else in the car to pump the pedal when needed. Slide yer arse under with a big mutha of a screwdriver to the starter and bridge the terminals (lotsa sparks) with the screwdriver. If the battery is good it will turn over. If it's bad it wont. If it turns slow there is not enough amps in the battery and if it has been charged it is buggered.Make sure it is in neutral before attemting this!! In relation to jump starting an EFI car...no problems.If using another vehicle make sure their motor is turned OFF.The voltage drop from you turning your car over causes the altenator on the other car to spike to correct the voltage.......hence the ECU can fry...seen it done many times by apprentices. Bugger. Good luck!! If you were a little bit closer i could give you a battery...:cry

Thanks for that Mick.
Why do I need to short the starter solenoid when I have a perfectly good ignition switch though?

I thought that having the EFI'd car off would ensure nothing happened to the 'puter.

There is something I noticed when I reconnected the kombi's battery after the charge. Usually I'd get heaps of helthy sparks. This time I didn't. As to why I got the sparks, I wish I knew. Maybe the stereo drawing current?

I know the alternator is still good though. It could run 2x100w high beam and 1x100w driving light not a prob.

Had a massive pile of batteries in Brigalow. Some of them probably still worked. Found out the hard way that some still had strong acid in them. Shame I didn't check.for good ones before I moved.
The offer is much appreciated though.

Well, tomorrow, oh wait today I'll put the 2nd battery on the charge. My jumper cables aren't amazing so they're a last resort. I'll give everything a bit of a cleanup too.
The 2nd battery is a big bugger from a 4wd so if it's still ok it should do it. If I can connect it that is.
You all may be wondering why it's so difficult for me to put a backwards battery in. I had to get the whole battery area reconstructed for rego last time. I like the job they did though. Very solid. Just a bit awkward to get a battery into is all. So I can't put it in askew or anything because it simply will not fit.

Anyway, I'm extremely tired and probably rambling. G'night all!

Here's an update.
The sun was setting by the time that I started, so my time was fairly limited.

I pulled out the secondary battery and put it on the charger. For some reason the liquid levels were really low in it. Topped up.

Checked the terminals. The wire on the negative was partially pulled out. Fixed it. Positive was fine.
Couldn't find my round file, so I settled for scratching the bejeebus out of the terminals with a screwdriver. Just enough to see if there was a current increase.
Turned on the van, Got the generator light, barely got the oil light, and the tacho lit up but not too brightly (digital dick smith jobbie). Of course when I turned the ignition, nothing. Mind you, I did realise a slight error. I left the +ve for the aux battery to lie when I pulled it out. It may not have helped matters.

I used my cheap multimeter on the battery charger, and also on the battery.
You know those cheap black multimeters in the cheap shops, and in dick smith, relabelled of course.
I plugged the +ve into the 10A socket and set the multimeter to the 10A setting too.
The multimeter read 12 or 13 before it tripped the overload on the charger. Good. That works.
Tried it on the main battery. Started off at about 4 and was slowly winding upward. To me that says the battery is there in body but not soul.
I'll try out the secondary battery tomorrow once it's done charging. Just to be sure the earth is good I'll use a jumper lead between the motor and battery.
If that's still no good, I'l do a quick jumpstart test with the EA turned off.

Something just dawned on me. One of the last things I did after the van went funny on me was chuck in an electric fuel pump to see if it was a fuel pump.
it's not even clicking. The current must be pretty bad!
While I'm at it, should I mount the electric properly and use it or go back to the mechanical pump? The mechanical pump leaks unfortunately, so it'd need a kit. The electric is out of an old subaru.

man you are the dodgy king hahaha....