Re: Mysterious failure to start

From: Peter Bristow
email: peterjbristow@dsl.pipex.co.uk
Date: 07 May 2006
Time: 11:07

Message

Thanks for those suggestions, Theo. Since I can hear something - presumably the fuel injection system - powering up when I turn the key, my feeling would be that the ignition switch is doing what it should. On your advice, that would point towards a problem with the starter motor solenoid. But I still can't help but feel that a prolonged period of stop-start traffic and consequent high under-bonnet temperatures is implicated somewhere along the way. Yesterday I had a really horrible grind back across town from the Ace - I missed the turning of off the A40 down towards Earls Court and ended up coming back via Paddington and Hyde Park Corner. Grosvenor Place was solid so I turned off and filtered down through the back roads of Belgravia to get to the Vauhall Bridge and then down through Vauxhall and Camberwell to home. The car was pretty hot and bothered after all that - as was I! The event at the Ace was pretty low key, so I think you were better off going to Auto Italia at Brooklands last week. There was a chap there with a nice Beta HPE Volumex, and an Alfa SZ (the brutal Zagato bodied affair). I gave a little interview to a freelance journalist who was there on behalf of (I think) Classics Monthly, which I'd never heard of. Still, he took a few pictures so we might get a little bit more publicity for the Gamma and the Consortium. He said he'd let me know if they were going to use it and, if so, when the mag would be published.