Trick movements
09/05/2025
There it is again, the unexpected, terse click when I try to operate the starter. It has teased me in the past, even leading to an unexpected, late-night first encounter with a Jaguar E-Type Flatfloor, back at about 2am after a club AGM when my XJ's twelve-cylinder couldn't be brought to life with its coffee-grinder-like sawing of the starter motor. A friend lent me his E-Type so that I could still get home. I left my own car, the breakdown service picked it up and delivered it to me later, after unloading it - after shaking it on the trailer - it started immediately, much to everyone's annoyance and then at least to my delight. In the meantime, the starter has been replaced and I have already covered many kilometers, which has required the use of the starter just as many times. Most of the time it has done its job without complaint.
Recently, however, it once again failed to do so. The TCS, the Swiss breakdown service, was called out again. The helping hand of the yellow angel on the ignition key and my hard blow with his foot and hammer on the solenoid switch brought the car back to life. Since then, the standard tool and jack bag of the XJ 12 Series 3 now also contains a long, cranked pry foot and a heavy locksmith's hammer. This works wonderfully, but is a little embarrassing because it looks like the preparations for levering an ATM out of a wall.
An immobile and a mobile construction site... Sometimes lazy tricks help with the mobile one!
But now I've discovered a trick! Up to now, the start-repeat lock - if that's what it's called - has always prevented me from giving a pulse to the solenoid switch in quick succession, so that it could still decide to make the power connection. However, if I hold the ignition key briefly from the contact point of the starter and wiggle it a few degrees against the return spring of the starter position of the lock, the contact can be made in quick succession. Then it always works on the second or third attempt. If you now get the impression that this is a rather improvised and, in all its inadequacy, somewhat bumbling method of solving the problem, I agree! Removing the starter motor, on the other hand, is - as the British say? - "A pain in the a...".
Yes, it actually annoys me - but on the other hand, it reminds me of my youth: back then, there were all sorts of tricks to keep all sorts of cars alive in the final phase of their earthly automotive life, despite having little or no budget: Holding here, then banging on there and simultaneously wiggling your ears or something so that the rusty duck or the worn Citroën BX started with a zillion kilometers. Or the repeated use of starting aid spray, parking downhill to start the car because the already weak battery was reluctant to do its job in winter and so on. Nostalgic feelings arise, my heart sinks or - it's just a pitiful attempt to admit to myself that one day I'll have to remove the damned British starter motor again! And that I'm going to tear my arms up to my elbows in the process, after I've already had to put all the ratchet extensions together to get to the bitchy starter motor under the right-hand cylinder bank behind the exhaust manifold. But wait, I still have the Geissfuss and the hammer... (Geissfuss = crowbar)
