I have a 2009 1.3 multijet. I live in the mountains in Alicante so car is vital, with ALL shops 35 kms away.Two months back car would not start but all lights and horn OK. Had a jump start,drove carefully to nearest garage. Guy put in new battery checked it was charging over 12 volts. Started fine and I then used it for 2 months. Two days ago same problem. It started after a nights rest, didnt dare turn off and went down to Nissan. Turned it off in front of the mechanic and it didnt start. He said it would be the starter and he would have to send to Madrid for new one. I thought well why not loose wire in ignition. He could do nothing as all the panel comes off with wire under the flooring also a mass of stuff has to come out to get at the starter.So it looks like megabucks. He started the car by turning the key on and off
a lot so we drove home and we hope to get there Monday for the work to be started. The weird thing is it didnt start after a journey but did after a rest, but that has been checked and surely all the lights on and horn full blast says there is enough juice in it. I have the thick Fiat manual but it doesnt even give a picture of the engine or starter. Does it have a solenoid ? They used to be problems. I would be grateful for any ideas, Thanks.

Hello and welcome to the forum :wave:.

The first thing to check is the earthing and all other relevant connections; they have been known to give trouble after a few years.

Don't rule out the battery; even new ones can occasionally be defective; but I'd put my money on this being a poor connection somewhere.

I seem to recall there's an issue with a washer underneath a nut on the starter motor cable with the diesel models - convinced I've read something about this in the past or am I imagining things?

Thanks for the comments on starter washer, and you may well be right,
but I dont fancy my chances to get the very unfriendly Spanish mechanic to check these first, though I will try

I don't know about Fiat Panda earthing blocks, but I can tell you on my 1999 Citroen XM, that in the past I have had to "touch" an earthing bloc on the inside of the front wing to get it to start! The touching and movement obviously re-establishes an earthing contact point on the shell.

After 10 years of sometimes having funny touch and go starting experiences from time to time; and trying over time everything (from jiggling relays, solenoids and fuses and wires to get the starter motor to jump into life........ it just turned out to be an earthing bloc mounting that needed "touching" to wake it up!

Also if your battery is only 2 months old; have all the terminals and contacts been tightened sufficiently? It could it be that one has worked a bit loose after battery replacement?

The symptoms of the bad earthing bloc on my other car were similar to having a flat battery.

As a side note I only ever buy "Varta" batteries now. They outperform other batteries in scientific tests; and my own experience has backed this up.

The worst batteries that I have found for endurance and failures over the years on my cars, have been Bosch.

On our Fiat Panda 1.2 ; it had the quickest battery failure I have ever experienced.

I was driving the car normally for weeks; all lengths of journey. So know the battery was fully charged and working. Everything fine and normal.

I saw my mother start and drive off to go a mile down the road to see a friend. Everything normal. Then 15 mintues later;I got phone call saying the car had broken down/wouldn't start.

Now the time taken was so short; that even if everything electrical was left turned on accidentally; then the car should still start after this brief time period.

This was summertime and daylight; and nothing on the car was left on.

I turned up in my other car. The Fiat gave the classic clicking noise of a flatish battery and would not start. However as the Fiat was flashing up EBD failure etc on the display; I was sure that it was caused by component or computer failure. I towed the car back home.


When I got round to sorting it out, it turned out the battery had totally failed in one mile of driving. It could not hold any charge even when charged up fully overnight on a car battery charger in the house; it lost all its charge in an hour or two. There was obviously internal battery failure/shorting out.

With the battery failing in the car this low voltage also caused EDB failure warnings on the display and a high temperature warning. The computer was confused with the low voltage. All these warnings on the display led me to believe at first that it was the car computer at fault & going wrong.

We now realise never to believe the Fiat computer displays and warnings. Luckily the fact that the Panda (mk 2) has an analogue temperature gauge; this means the "computer temperature warning" can be quickly ruled out and ignored.

The battery on the car that failed was the original 7 year old battery. But instead of gradually losing power and cranking capacity over time (how battery failures normally become apparent); this battery went from hero to zero (from all to nothing) in just a few minutes and one mile of driving.

Since this battery experience, the car computer still gets confused with the engine temperature from time to time; and flashes up warnings even when the car is cold on start up first thing in the morning.

All my years of motoring experiences mean that I, personally, myself only ever buy Varta batteries when my car batteries need replacing. Do read the independent scientific battery testing reports. There can be massive battery variations between brands for the "same" battery. I read the then latest reports two or three years ago now, and now I only buy the Varta brand of battery.

I forgot to say :-

And even if the car car alternator is charging fine; if the battery plates are internally corroded/expanded/shorting out......then you can & will still have starting problems.

That is what happened on our Fiat Panda.

The most likely cause is the common engine earth strap with is the large black earth lead running from the negative battery earth terminal down the front of the engine bay to the body then to the front for the gear box, if this has a poor connection the car won't start even though everything else seems fine

The bottom end of the cable being on the front of the gearbox gets a lot of road crud and debris flicked up at it, leads to corrosion of the copper core and as a result poor connection.

You can change the cable or if not too bad get away with crushing the crimped end a bit firmer on the core

This seems to be fairly common on fiats

Starter motor solenoid (failing or lose wire or lose earth) can also give the same symptoms you have.

Why a car can sometimes start after a rest as you describe is because of the thermal contraction/expansion. Whether that is what is happening on yours would need checking out; but that can and does happen.

Sometimes running a jumping lead from the starter motor (earth) directly to the battery (earth) can get them to start too; as sometimes this earth is a problem on other cars that I have had. Sometimes the negative earthing wire from the car body to the battery is old/tired or insufficient.

Another point:-
One of my cars is 42 years old. I had to rebuild the starter motor because the internal divisions had broken down with age and were shorting out.

That is a possibility too. It is said never to crank the engine for more then 5 seconds; so the motor does not get too hot.

Hope that gives you something to work on. it surely has to be one of those!

Hello to all. I have checked the neg. and pos. connections and they are firmly bolted in. The negative has three leads going off and the thicker main one appears to be bolted to a frame which is probably for the engine mounting. Too crowded to see but I can feel no looseness. Cannot see the starter either then down on my hands and knees and cant see it then. I am over 80 so my days of crawling underneath are over, or the car ramps.I have had cars for 60 years and for the first 40 did all my own repairs even putting in a S/H engine. But 15 years ago my new car was computerised and everthing packed too tight for easy access, So that was the last of my DIY. Great loss, but that's progress,
Thanks to all for the advice, Off to the Garage Monday morning and he said it would take a few days. Will let you know the result end of next week.

Hi, well I went to the garage and they already had the starter coming in that day,so I left the car and came back later. Starter installed and all OK.
This was ordered and put in without any examination on their part so I
won't go back their again.I havent had to renew a new starter in 60 years of motoring and I have had plenty of second-hand cars in that time I am sure it was bad electrical fault or solenoid. Of course putting in a new unit would cure that at the same time. Another 300 Euros gone!
Thanks to you all for your advice

limbo said:

Hi, well I went to the garage and they already had the starter coming in that day,so I left the car and came back later. Starter installed and all OK.
This was ordered and put in without any examination on their part so I
won't go back their again.I havent had to renew a new starter in 60 years of motoring and I have had plenty of second-hand cars in that time I am sure it was bad electrical fault or solenoid. Of course putting in a new unit would cure that at the same time. Another 300 Euros gone!
Thanks to you all for your advice

Click to expand...

Changing the starter on these is a bit of an arse anyway one of the bolts is through a hole in the clutch housing making it very easy to drop the bolt down into the clutch

Hopefully it's cured the problem, I would too be surprised if it was the starter motor they do seem to be built proof on the multijet