Technical A bottle of something very nice......

[Kirkers]

..... to the person who solves this..
I thought I would start a new thread will a full sorry of what happed to Carla as it’s a real mystery….
Carla has been running perfectly back in the UK.. She was professional recommisioned and has been serviced by a professional mechanic with a great knowledge of X 1/9’s.
I then had a radio fitted, it was from the USA! Might be important??
It was fitted by a car radio company, however I did have to go back after the radio only worked when the lights were on …….warning bells!!!
I then had a problem with the radio as the speakers were shorting out a bit and crackling so just unplugged the radio for the trip…
When I got to Tenerife with no problems at all, except a bit of sea sickness, not me J
I then refitted the speakers, this time with plenty if insulating tape..
The car was running 100%...
The radio did work, however it used to cut out quite a bit, as if it was loosing power, for the first 10 mins of a journey, its as if it was waiting for something to charge up…
Then every now and then when I tried to start the car it would just fail, as if there was no power from the battery for a split second, then she bursts into life and is fine….
The problem with the radio having to “Warm up” went away…
Then out of the blue, after funning really well it just stopped, it was as if the coil lead had just popped off, I know this as this happened a few weeks before in the same spot, I was fitting new leads one at a time, starting with the coil, it didn’t fit as well as the old one so I put the old one back on…

So, that’s chapter 1….
I will add the second very soon, I thought it would be good to get some comments just on this section…

There will be a bottle of something very nice to the person who solves this little mystery….

 

[jimbro1000]

The only significance to the car radio being from the USA is that they use a slightly different range of frequencies for tuning - the rest of it should work exactly the same.

1 wire for earthing the radio (often problematic on older cars)
1 wire for permanent live (not explicitly present on the original stereos as they didnt have digital memory - however most fiats do not require the ignition to be on to run the stereo so in fact it is still normally there)
1 wire for running live (see above - older cars only had one "live" to the stereo but if present it should match with the auxiliary on setting of the ignition switch) *** this could be important ***
2/4/8 wires for speakers depending on outputs

Forget about the speakers shorting out - you've insulated the connections and solved that problem. It was just really crap workmanship from whoever fitted them in the first place.

Now going back to that important bit - there is a fair chance that your car stereo people decided to mess with the ignition wiring at the steering column in order to obtain the expected range of wires for power. This being the case they may have put a crud connection in the circuit which is in the grand scheme of things - unforgiveable.

Ironically my TVR Griffith used to do this as a result of a fault in the immobiliser (took a year of fiddling to get a sorted by which point I was selling the car due to being more than a bit hacked off - especially when I told the garage that I thought it was the immobiliser on day 1). I'm assuming you don't have an immobiliser fitted though...

 

[H105Daz]

Might be barking completely up the wrong tree here, but this stereo you had fitted, was it an old retro style model .. possibly with a positive earth?

:idea: just thinking aloud!

 

[Kirkers]

Might be barking completely up the wrong tree here, but this stereo you had fitted, was it an old retro style model .. possibly with a positive earth?

:idea: just thinking aloud!

Its was a new radio..

http://www.vintagevibes.net/Stereos/secretaudio.htm

It worked fine for a few weeks...

 

[jimbro1000]

Nice stereo!

I stand by my previous statement. Someone has cut the wiring up to make it work the way they think it should and you now have a dirty connection. This is upsetting the ignition/starter circuit and the stereo.