Deisel Fiesta

[colin salmon]

  My brother in law has a 1.8 deisel fiesta, recently the starter gave up the ghost, on changing it and some of the wiring with identical units obtained from a scap yard the car started okay, but now the ignition light wont go out and a fully charged battery will be totally drained with a trip of about 2 miles, twice the starter since being fitted has made a noise like it hadn't disengaged when the engine started on these occasions the ignition light has gone out, is there a problem with the starter or has the battery or altenator  gone wonky at the same time as the original starter. Hope somebody can shed some light on this problem.

     Many thanks

         Fish

[v64paul]

low battery voltage is a common killer of starters, causing the starter solenoid to stick resulting in the starter pinion staying in mesh with the flywheel. best fault diagnosis advice is go back to the beginning and work through what you have replaced. it sounds like you've cured one fault and introduced another. this is surprisingly common even to experienced people.as for multiple unit failure it is possible, but unlucky. mechanical stuff can have a mind of it's own as i'm sure many will agree! off to work (2-10 is not nice!) will check back later. 

[verrecchia]

sounds a wiring fault, there should be a wire that goes to the alternator and if this is on wrongly can mean the altenator simply is not connected and therefore will not charge the battery of power the electrics, or perhaps the alternator has just happend to pack up at the same time as the starter, it does happen, as for the starter not disengaging, it may just be sticky, and once the flywheel turns at speed it should disengage, as it really had no choice, but this is the dnager of buying form scrap yards, you will probably find that a recon starter, fitted would cost about �40.

One Question, If it was an identical unit, why did you need to change wiring too?

[colin salmon]

Cheers

  v6.4paul andverrecchia we fixed the problem, stripped it back down cleaned all the connections and put it back together and it worked, we changed the wiring at the start because when we took the starter out some of the wiring from the alternator broke.