Hi all,

I couldn't find the fault with the Corsa I mentioned a while back (but
not had much chance to look at it either)... What would be a ballpark
figure for how much a decent auto electrician would charge to sort out a
niggly earth fault? I realise it's like "how long is a piece of
string?"... Say it took half a day to a day to sort out?

Thanks,

Peter.

Peter Spikings wrote:


Assume abot £60 per hour at local dealersip £40.00 per hour independant



--

In article <1176211454.21544.122.camel (AT) peter (DOT) power.net.uk>,
Peter Spikings <peter (AT) spikings (DOT) com> wrote:
If you know it is an earth fault then just make a new one. If you're
guessing, however...

--
*Constipated People Don't Give A Crap*

Dave Plowman dave (AT) davenoise (DOT) co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 17:18 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
A new what? Earth fault? Car?

No, I'm fairly certain it's an earth fault, just can't find it.. it's
intermittent and doesn't happen too often.

Peter.

In article <1176278764.21544.131.camel (AT) peter (DOT) power.net.uk>,
Peter Spikings <peter (AT) spikings (DOT) com> wrote:
A new earth. ;-)

Then as I said just provide a new one. Most usual types to fail are those
provided for things like taillights where to save assembly time the
taillight fixing also doubles as the earth. So there is poor clamping and
only one contact path between body and terminal - where they touch. A
decent earth will clamp to both sides of the body panel - something like a
nut and bolt or rivet.

--
*It was all so different before everything changed.

Dave Plowman dave (AT) davenoise (DOT) co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 09:52 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:


Hmm... Yes, going to be something like that or something earthing when
it shouldn't? The symptoms are that sometimes the dashboard switches off
while driving and sometimes it doesn't start for the first few tries
(clicking from relay but no movement from starter motor). Sometimes
these faults occur at the same time (dashboard dies so they pull over
and try to restart it, which doesn't work).

Haven't yet been able to have a look at it while the problems are
occurring so it's very hard to diagnose There's probably a pattern to
these faults but I haven't been able to extract that information from
the driver

Peter.

In article <1176283427.21544.142.camel (AT) peter (DOT) power.net.uk>,
Peter Spikings <peter (AT) spikings (DOT) com> wrote:
If it has a basic starter circuit with no immobiliser for that I'd guess
you have two faults. The relay you're hearing should be sending current to
the starter circuit which will have its own heavy duty relay. So shouldn't
be too hard to trace. It's unlikely the heavy duty relay in the starter
would share an earth with the dash. However, if it has an immobiliser it's
possible that comes between the relay you're hearing and the starter.

Big snag is that unless it's a known fault(s) an electrician could spend a
lot of time trying to find it or them.

--
*A day without sunshine is like... night.*

Dave Plowman dave (AT) davenoise (DOT) co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 11:06 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
It's the old model Corsa (51 reg) and I think it does have an
immobiliser, I'll check that. How do modern immobilisers work, do they
interrupt power to the ECU as well as the starter and when they stop the
starter working is it in the feed to the starter or the feed to the
relay (hence not needing to get in the way of hundreds of amps)? If the
immobiliser wasn't working and normally works by stopping the relay
closing then presumably there wouldn't have been any clicking when they
tried to start it.

Hence me asking how much it would cost for half a day to a days work.
I'm a bit hesitant to recommend doing that given that there's a risk an
electrician will spend a day working on it and not find the fault! I
guess I should make that risk clear

Thanks,

Peter.