Series 2 starting issues

[Gaia]

We own a much loved 1963 Series 2 Land Rover. For a while we’ve been having problems starting the car: sometimes she starts and sometimes she doesn’t. When she doesn’t, all you hear is a click. A few years ago the start motor was replaced and then a year ago our garage (a regular garage not specialised in old Land Rovers) changed the starter again. But it remained unreliable. Hitting the start motor usually helped, but we wanted to solve this once and for all. Our garage started to investigate but only made it worse: now there is no click anymore and hitting it doesn’t help. The only way to get the car going is to push it. Does anyone have a suggestion what the problem might be and how to solve this? It’s not the start motor itself, that much we know.

[acpatsouris]

Is your vehicle a petrol or diesel model? Would it be possible to post a picture of starter?

[siiirhd88]

If you still have the large pushbutton starter switch, the contact disc inside can corrode preventing contact. They can sometimes be taken apart and cleaned or sanded to restore the surface.

Bob

[roverp480]

I had similar issue when returning home from France to UK, nothing when I operated the starter switch. It turned out to be a bad connection , main battery cable to the starter switch. Suggest you first take off each connection a, clean a replace , just to make sure they are all OK.
Previously I had intermittent contact with the push button switch and rebuilt it as mentined by siiirhd88

[vlad_d]

roverp480 is right about checking the cables. Check the negative cable for a good ground. It’s cheap to replace. I had a mystery 6-month electrical issue like this the dealer couldn’t even find. It turned out to be the negative battery cable. It looked good, was tightly connected, but frayed inside the casing. Wiggling it made the car start better. Just replace it, it’s cheap and easy. Also a good negative connection fixes so many gremlins…save yourself future headaches for a $20 cable.

The other thing after that is to check the relay/solenoid. On these Series trucks, they are separate from the starter. Follow the battery cables to a knuckle sized box about a foot away. That thing could be failing to engage and send power to the starter reliably.

next is your ignition switch. You can bypass all these things to test them: briefly jump directly from the battery to the starter to test it and rule out the starter…briefly jump the low amperage side of the solenoid to test the solenoid engaged…briefly Hotwire the ignition to rule out a faulty switch.

Lastly, you might have some alignment issue with your starter gear and flywheel. The fact that tapping the starter fixes it points to it gettting stuck. Some starters use shims or a thin spacer to adjust the fit. Not sure how to check this. Maybe look for wear on the teeth of the starter? It’s probably electrical though, as you said the starter has been replaced recently.