Hi All

A strange one (unless I'm going mad). I've just brought my red special home to start on it's chassis change. It was running ok although the ignition contact drum was knackered so I decided to hotwire it so I could start it reliably for the time being. All was well until I bridged the wires to engage the starter....and all went dead. Now nothing at all works - nothing on the ignition circuit and not even the permantly live stuff such as the horn and hazard lights. All the fuses seem intact and there is still 12v at the first igintion drum connector. It's a B-reg with a single fuse box. Battery is in good health.

Any ideas or am I overlooking something obvious? (it was at 11pm yesterday so I gave up and went to bed!))

Thanks
Will

For absolutely nothing to work I'd suggest it's something "early on" in the circuit pretty close to the battery. The main earth maybe?

Either that or in shorting across the starter motor, you've welded & shorted the positive connection to earth?

Use a test lamp. Contect one wire to the 12 volt you already have and the other anywhere on the body to see if negative is working. If no light in the test lamp, the negative is burnt somewhere, maybe the yellow wire connecting the - from battery to firewall.

Will,
assuming the battery is OK, have you tried cleaning the contact surfaces of the posts and the leads?

If there's corrosion at these surfaces, anything which draws a relatively low current isn't a problem, but the heavy current drawn when the starter engages can produce an insulating layer.

Not uncommon with cars which have been laid up for some time...

ken

Thanks, I'll have a look at the earthing and clean up the battery terminals as suggested. Just seems strange as one minute it was all ok, everything working fine and next minute, nothing. Maybe I have inadvertently shorted something. I'll have a play.

Old duc alternator with internal fuse?
but then youd have battery voltage

so im no help there really

Ah, I didn't know that. Might explain one of my old Kawasaki's more annoying foibles!

i always grease battery terminals when i put clamps on...

All sorted now. I took the battery cables off and gave them a good clean, cleaned up the battery terminals and tightened everything up properly.This seems to have done the trick. Thanks!