A few months ago, my Xantia V6 suffered from the starter intermittantly not turning the engine. I pulled it apart, found that the main contacts in the solenoid were badly burned. I fitted a new solenoid, lubricated the starter and all was well... for a while.
A month or so ago it started palying up again, and got worse to the point that I needed to turn the key 20 or 30 times before the starter would turn, but I could always hear the solenoid moving.
So I attacked it again today, the first thing I did was clean the terminal on the main cable from the battery to the solenoid, I expected it to have been burning where it is crimped, but it looked OK, but had been very hot at some time in the past (when the contacts burned on the previous solenoid).
So I tried energising the solenoid directly with a wire from the battery, and the starter spun happily on every hit. So I measured the voltage on the control terminal of the solenoid when operating the key, and it was about 6V when the starter did not operate, and about 8V on those occarions when it did.
I then spent a lot of time finding the starter inhibit relay (it is the purple relay in the fuse box behind the battery). On checking the voltages at the relay it was clear that 4V of the drop was upstram of the inhibit relay, and about 1V downstream.
Upstream of the inhibit relay, the only identifiable culprit is the ignition switch, but I did nto have enough enthusiasm to deal with replacing that, so I rewired the spare (blue) relay socket (beside the purple one) to take a relay to clean up the voltage form the ignition switch.
This seems to have done the trick. The start now hits every time, and there is about 10V on the solenoid control terminal. There is still 1V of drop between the relays and the solenoid, but this is in the connector which is clipped to the bottom of the A/C compressor (stupid place to put it because it gets wet and corrodes). Next time I am working on the car, I will run a new wire from the relay to the solenoid.
Xantia V6 starter relay
Moderator: RichardW
