4 replies to this topic

[mini-mad-mark]

Not an easy fix as my mini has had a bunch of stuff added to the electrical system (by me) but everything worked perfectly for 8 years.
One day the radio went dead and when I checked, half the other electrics were dead also. Only the fuse that is live at ign position 2 is working
The permanent live (or not!!) is out and both pos 1 lives are out as well, that is to say that the live in feed is not live in 3 of the 4 fuses

Car was running so ign circuit unaffected charge warning light not lit - I am stumped

Tried a complete rewire with no sucess, is there maybe a problem in the alternator or solenoid or something stupid I dont know about?

Mini 1982 city e centre dash with plenty of wiring mods so not much help I know

Any ideas?

Cheers, Mark

[Dan]

There is only 1 ignition position 1 live fuse. Fuse 4 is only live when the side lights are switched on.

Have you tried bypassing the ignition switch?

[mini-mad-mark]

In case anyone picks this up and wonders what happened I eventually found that one of the wires to the solenoid was broken at the terminal and was touching intermittently so sometimes everything worked and then when the engnine rocked a bit the wire would spread and cut off one set of circuits (found after I had rewired the inside of the car about three times!!!

[MRA]

That's funny !   I was just about to ask how you got on lol

 

But seriously it's good to have closure

 

You are not far from me either....

Edited by MRA, 16 March 2016 - 08:50 PM.

[dklawson]

I hope you found the broken wire in 2011 and not recently !  As Martin said, thanks for posting your findings.

 

Incidentally I used to own an early VW Golf with factory electronic ignition.  The pickup under the dizzy cap had three very delicate wires.  We started having problems where the car would idle great but as soon as you tried to accelerate the engine would die.  That turned out to be breaks in those three little pickup wires.  They would make contact at idle but as soon as any vacuum advance started to move the module, the wires would separate.