Won't start, wipers and full beam instead!

[JonL]

Ok, so my Sport gave me a nice Xmas present this morning when I went to start it for a special Xmas day drive.

What happened was when I got to the cranking over stage of ignition, instead of the started motor turning over, the front and rear wipers came on and so did the full beams! It won't crank over at all! Very weird!

I'm unsure if this is directly related, it probably is in some way, but I noticed yesterday that the heater fan wasn't working, so I replaced the fuse, and it blew straight away! However, at that point the car was still starting!

Any ideas anyone, I can see this one being a pain to track down when I get a chance to look at it later!

Thanks!

[Nova_Tek]

Normally wierd electircal gremlins that happen like that are due to damaged wiring shorting somewhere and or bad earthing. The bad wire has proabbly drained you battery and is actvating the lights.

[novaowner999]

wow wish i could go for a special xmas drive in a sport. come to think of it that my ideal christmas present. hope u sort ur prob i think your novas pissed of with u cos u haven't drove it for ages lol

[JonL]

Right, have done a lot more investigation now:

It's not the full beams that are coming on, it's the side lights and the hazards, , not flashing though!(front and rear)

I've take every single fuse out now, and it's still happening, although the wipers don't go, only the lights come on.

If I disconnect say the nearside rear light cluster, then the nearside front hazard does not come on.

It doesn't appear to be draining the battery, as I have a good voltage still.

I'm guessing that it's probably got something to do with the lighting loom, although, could that be indicative of any bad earth?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

[brucer]

i had this problem with my gte when i got it,turned out to be the earth from the gearbox to the chassis.were it bolted to the chasses al the thread was funked causing a bad earth.relocated it and all was fine.

my wipers would come on to and various other things but cant remember them all as this was a couple years ago.

hope it helps.

[JonL]

Ok, thanks for the suggestions, inspected the gearbox to chassis earth, no fraying, and was screwed in fine, also checked the main earthing cable, same, no problems there.

I've now stripped pretty much everything out of the equation, and now when I put the indicators on, they work fine, but when I put the hazards on, the rear indicators flash fine, but the front ones don't flash, but the sidelights do instead?

Any more ideas/suggestions?

[Dar]

Just to add. I had almost the same symptoms as you i.e. go to crank and the wipers came on. It was an earth connection. I made new earth straps and hey presto it never hapened again.

Just a visual inspection of the earths is not always good enough, take the straps off check them and clean up all the surfaces.

[JonL]

Working now, yay! :)

Thanks guys! Was a bad earth! It seems that the loom was also earthed to the gearbox on a separate bolt (not seen this before on another nova IIRC), took it off and cleaned it up, fine now!

[mikey14sr]

Working now, yay! :)

Thanks guys! Was a bad earth! It seems that the loom was also earthed to the gearbox on a separate bolt (not seen this before on another nova IIRC), took it off and cleaned it up, fine now!

Would that be an earth coming from the coil area of the loom? That one normally goes to the bolt for the gearbox earth on the chassis leg, but so long as it's earthed well it'll do.