scudocamper
New member
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2015
- Messages
- 2
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- 1
This is less of a call for help and more of a thank you with a bit of a rambling explanation.
My Scudo is currently in the process of being camper-fied on the cheap - though I'm doing ok if I do say so myself, with a nice folding bed and min-kitchen.
Anyway, in nearly every way the van is great, drives and feels nice and is in pretty good nick. Starting up in a morning however was a ballache involving either parking on a hill and bumping it or the use of some easy-start. Once it's started on any given day it will be fine until the next day when it has been sat for that bit too long and the fun starts again. So, for the past few days I've been browsing these pages - all 60 odd of em.
First thought was glow plugs. At this point i didn't have a voltage tester so I checked to see if they were getting warm - and they were'nt so I whipped em out to see them pretty rough looking. Checked them by powering them up and sure enough not much heat created. So, changed the plugs.
Still no joy with the cold start though.
Bought a tester and went on the hunt. My fears here were that it would be either the battery not giving enough crank of a morning, a lazy starter or even an alternator not charging enough. So checked all those and thankfully fine. Other obvious culprit would be the glow plug relay. Tested the relay switching and it was making the contact fine. Tried testing the plugs themselves now that I had a tester - and no power was getting to them at all. I didnt think to check first time so I checked the feed to the glow plug relay - zero volts. traced the cable threw the plastic conduit stuff and traced it back to the terminal on the alternator. Voltage at the alternator. Pulled the battery and checked continuity - nothing travelleling through the the wire so I double checked it was the right cable before cutting the crimped ends of and belling it out again - still nothing.
Pulled the cable out and replaced it as I went (taped together and pulled it through rather than pulling everything to bits) new crimps and connected back up and we have voltage at the relay. The 6mm (ish) cable had a scorched break in it btw but with the plastic conduit you'd never see it without tracing it out with a continuity tester.
So, gave it a few turns at warming before turning it over and it fires like a good un.
So, thanks to all those threads on non-starting scudos I looked at all the usual suspects - plugs, relay, earth straps, battery, starter, but as it happens it was none of those things and a relatively easy (and cheap) fix Probably not as methodical as I could have been but I managed to check them all of until I found the culprit.
I'm not the most savvy about vehicles, so it took quite a bit of winnowing down too working out what it could be given my set of symptoms.
Reason for posting was to say cheers for all the info and to write up a successful fault hunt.
My Scudo is currently in the process of being camper-fied on the cheap - though I'm doing ok if I do say so myself, with a nice folding bed and min-kitchen.
Anyway, in nearly every way the van is great, drives and feels nice and is in pretty good nick. Starting up in a morning however was a ballache involving either parking on a hill and bumping it or the use of some easy-start. Once it's started on any given day it will be fine until the next day when it has been sat for that bit too long and the fun starts again. So, for the past few days I've been browsing these pages - all 60 odd of em.
First thought was glow plugs. At this point i didn't have a voltage tester so I checked to see if they were getting warm - and they were'nt so I whipped em out to see them pretty rough looking. Checked them by powering them up and sure enough not much heat created. So, changed the plugs.
Still no joy with the cold start though.
Bought a tester and went on the hunt. My fears here were that it would be either the battery not giving enough crank of a morning, a lazy starter or even an alternator not charging enough. So checked all those and thankfully fine. Other obvious culprit would be the glow plug relay. Tested the relay switching and it was making the contact fine. Tried testing the plugs themselves now that I had a tester - and no power was getting to them at all. I didnt think to check first time so I checked the feed to the glow plug relay - zero volts. traced the cable threw the plastic conduit stuff and traced it back to the terminal on the alternator. Voltage at the alternator. Pulled the battery and checked continuity - nothing travelleling through the the wire so I double checked it was the right cable before cutting the crimped ends of and belling it out again - still nothing.
Pulled the cable out and replaced it as I went (taped together and pulled it through rather than pulling everything to bits) new crimps and connected back up and we have voltage at the relay. The 6mm (ish) cable had a scorched break in it btw but with the plastic conduit you'd never see it without tracing it out with a continuity tester.
So, gave it a few turns at warming before turning it over and it fires like a good un.
So, thanks to all those threads on non-starting scudos I looked at all the usual suspects - plugs, relay, earth straps, battery, starter, but as it happens it was none of those things and a relatively easy (and cheap) fix Probably not as methodical as I could have been but I managed to check them all of until I found the culprit.
I'm not the most savvy about vehicles, so it took quite a bit of winnowing down too working out what it could be given my set of symptoms.
Reason for posting was to say cheers for all the info and to write up a successful fault hunt.