We have been examining our mini-digger these last few days, tracking down the reason to why it won’t work. There is no noises, just a silent nothing of no engine turning over etc.
We checked the battery and it is showing signs of being old, not holding it voltage when we turn the key to ignition mode. The voltage just falls very quickly below 12V which is not good. So we decided that we ought to buy a new lead-acid battery replacement. That duly arrived (on Saturday) but unfortunately, it didn’t solve the problem.
Digger-New-Battery-Aug-22
The starter motor still wouldn’t want to turn over. We had always had a problem with our starter motor, and quite often, we had to hit it with a hammer to ‘jolt’ something to make it work, but, it seems that it decided that it had enough .. permanently!!
So we had to dismantle the back-end of the digger, taking off four very heavy pieces of body work, in order to reach the starter motor and its two bolts!! Some of those bodywork bolts were very awkward to reach and for one set of two giant bolts, we had to put an old scaffolding pole over the handle of the wrench to get enough leverage to crack the bolt! We started testing the motor, it was getting electricity to it, but nothing was happening, so out it came.
So we surfed the web and found the starter motor part number and then found a replacement spare part. The cost wasn’t too bad @ £150, and so we ordered it.
It came today and we fitted it this morning and .. hey presto .. it worked! Every time!!
Digger-Old-Starter-Motor
Digger-New-Starter-Motor
We cleaned up various parts, checked the engine oil and put some more in and then re-assemble the body work back into place again.
We greased all the joints all over the digger, filled it up with more diesel and put grease on various handles and window latches etc. All a bit better now, for a 2002 vintage machine! We have only added 366 hours of run time since we bought it back in May 2009, on top of the 2953 hours already on the clock.