Welp, the car decided that it no longer wanted to start whilst I was in the middle of town. One single audible click when trying to turn the car over even though it started perfectly fine 20 minutes before. Had to bump start it down the road on a busy street which wasn’t fun.

Got home, gave the starter a bit of a whack with a spanner in the hopes it would fire back up but still that same single click. I’ve never had a starter motor break so suddenly without the whacking trick working so I can only assume it’s the starter relay. Issue is the fuse diagrams in the car are awful and I can’t work out which relay is the starter. Does anyone have any idea which position it’s in? It’s a 214

Should also add it’s not the battery or alternator as they’ve both been checked and are doing exactly what they’re supposed to

Sounds like it could be a bad earth. Remove and clean the earths to the slam panel and the starter motor. Worth trying first as it doesn't cost anything. If that doesn't work then it might well be the starter solenoid, which could just fail. This presumes that the connection to the battery is good.

Is the click coming from the dashboard area?

Or somewhere in the engine bay?

I think most of the 'important' relays are in the fusebox next to the battery. Usefully, most of them are the same, so you could try swapping them around to see if the problem moves to a different circuit.

As already suggested, a check of all the earths would be beneficial too. And also check the spade terminal and connector on the starter solenoid to make sure they are clean and tight.

I’ll give it a go today, will clean the earths first and then I’ll just swap all the relays into different positions to see if that makes a difference if not. Issue is my fuse box in the engine compartment doesn’t have a diagram on it so I think it may have been replaced at some point in it’s life. One of the downsides of these cars being quite rare now is that there’s absolutely no pictures or diagrams online showing what each relay actually is haha. Will update when done

Well I’m absolutely not an expert but my basic mechanical knowledge tells me that’s not how that wire should look, in which case surely this is the problem? Just gonna leave this here for confirmation. And yes it’s not all connected at the end that’s not just a camera trick

Update, just had someone turn the key whilst I held the cable in place by hand and voila, the starter motor started like normal so we have found the issue, luckily from here it looks like a bit of electrical tape to hold it in place for now until I have time to fix it will do the job

That needs repairing properly (ie reterminated or replaced). The amount of current that is drawn through that cable will cause it to overheat with just the few strands as shown connected, and could potentially cause a fire.

Oh yeah 100% I’m not gonna start it more than twice before I get it fully repaired, just enough to get it going to get me home for Monday as I’m away right now and have no access to the right equipment

lsowden12 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 22, 2023 12:00 pm Update, just had someone turn the key whilst I held the cable in place by hand and voila, the starter motor started like normal so we have found the issue, luckily from here it looks like a bit of electrical tape to hold it in place for now until I have time to fix it will do the job

Very brave!

I had the same issue on a 214 SEi many years ago and it was a similar fault.

How did you go about fixing it? I'm starting to realise this is probably going to be a case of replacing the whole cable. Issue is I use the car as my daily so I've been parking it on hills then bump starting it to bypass the starter to get to and from work which isn't very efficient and I'm not sure how big of a job its going to end up being