Anyone had a Brise starter fail

[Dave McCulloch]

Following on from my previous thread about killing my battery at the Oulton Park trackday (let the electrolyte level drop below the plates) I fitted a new battery last weekend, but the car is still struggling to start. Put a meter on the battery, and on cranking the voltage only drops to about 10v - so new battery appears ok.

 

Measured resistance of main +ve lead to starter, and its 0.1ohms, and resistance from battery negative to engine block is about 0.5ohms.

 

So the only thing I can think is the Brise starter is faulty. I'm halfway through doing an oil change, and took the plugs out to spin the engine over to get oil pressure before starting - but even with no compression the starter is turning quite slowly and quickly gets very hot - which doesn't sound right to me (voltage with no compression to fight stays at about 11v).

 

Anyone else had similar symptons? Going to strip starter off car and send back to Brise for testing me thinks.

 

Dave

[Rob Walker]

Sounds like the starter is failing with shorted windings.

[strij]

Dave

0.5 ohm is way too high.

These connections need to be something like 10 milliohms.

Try measuring the voltage across the starter terminals while cranking.

I assume that you are using a multimeter to measure the resistance. These are not very accurate when measuring less than 1ohm.

Try measuring the voltage across each connection while operating the starter, if there is a bad connection a high proportion of the 12V will appear across it.

Battery +terminal to stud on solonoid sould be <1v

Battery -terminal to engine block should be <1

Starter motor +ve stud to starter case 10V or better, in the end all your measurements will have to add up to whatever your on load battery voltage is.

Check across every mechanical interface, battery lug to battery cable ring terminal etc.

Its better to have the battery -ve cable going to the engine or gearbox rather than to a point on the chassis and then to the engine, this just introduces more connections with the potential to corrode and a longer current path for the starter motor current.

You will still need a connection -ve battery connection to chassis to supply all other electrical loads not mounted on the engine.

Have you tried turning the engine over by hand (using socket on crank pulley bolt) to make to make sure that nothing is binding, a bit of a long shot I know.

 

Hope this makes sense.

john S

 

[Myles]

Anyone had a Brise starter fail

 

Yes - two solenoids have died in two years. One was diagnosed with a 'high-resistance internal connection' and caused the starter to turn very slowly - I could only get the engine going with a hefty jump start from a running tintop.

 

 

 

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[Dave McCulloch]

Thanks all.

 

John - I'll measure the voltage drops through the system when I get a moment.

 

Myles - interesting re the high solenoid resistance failure - though when I was cranking to get oil pressure up after the oil change, it was the starter itself which got very hot (and I was only doing 15 second bursts to avoid overheating it), and not the solenoid - I would have thought a high solenoid resistance would result in the solenoid getting very hot given the current the starter draws.

 

Ironically, it started this morning - although the starter still sounded a bit sluggish.

 

Dave

[Dave McCulloch]

It's taken a while - but I've finally got round to looking at this - I'm losing almost 3.5 volts across the solenoid, leaving only 7v across the starter itself - no wonder it's struggling to start the engine!

 

Will be calling Brise tomorrow to get it sorted out - it was new in Nov 05 so well out of warranty - oh well!

 

Dave

[Beelzebub]

Yeah, I've replaced the solenoid & I'm not the first. It's no big deal having to replace the thing but I can't say I best impressed by the quality of my "competition starter motor". Mine failed a little over a year after purchase, which IMO isn't good enough. My primaries are lagged & the starters got its own heatshield & I can think of no legitimate reason for it to fail prematurely. I could have bought almost four Magnetons for the same price. I won't be recommending them to anybody else

 

[Dave McCulloch]

Mmmm - particularly as Caterham now make an uprated starter motor which will fit at a considerably cheaper price than the Brise....

 

Dave - I assume you had to send the whole starter back to Brise to get it fixed. Pretty heavy so I expect the postage won't be cheap either.

 

Dave

[SLR69]

I have a friend with a Lotus Exige VHPD and his original starter motor failed after five years.

 

He decided to change to a Brise and has had two fail in less than three years so has gone back to an original starter motor and has had no problems since.

 

Admittedly the Exige probably has a hotter engine bay than a 7 being in the rear of the car but it does perhaps show that a Brise is not necessarily the solution.

[Myles]

I assume you had to send the whole starter back to Brise to get it fixed.

 

You can if you want, but they'll sell you a solenoid which is easy enough to fit

 

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