She's becoming a sod to start especially when cold/left standing. Reading through the various threads here it seems that the earthing points would be a good place to start.

However... I have two earth leads running from the battery -ve terminal, both of which terminate almost at the same point on the chassis! My understanding is that there should be a connection from battery -ve to chassis, another from battery -ve to gearbox (or a 'jumper' link between chassis earth point and gearbox), and one from the chassis earth point to the bulkhead. Is this the case for my trusty old 90 n/a - it's only the two connections above (battery -ve, direct-to-chassis) that I have at present!

Also, where on the gearbox should I connect to and does gearbox mean transfer box, or is there little difference for earthing purposes?

Thanks in advance.

Mine had a short one from block to chassis near the engine mount and one from the battery to the chassis behind the seat box area.
The important one is getting a good connection from the battery neg to the block for the starting side of things.
You haven't said what the starting issue is though.

Thanks for that... the starting issue is slow cranking speed and reluctance for the engine to 'catch'. The local LR indy says that running an earth from battery -ve to the rear of gearbox will help with this, but as per my post, I'm not sure where on the gearbox to connect up to - would ANY bolt on the gearbox/transfer box housing suffice?

The best connection would be straight from the battery neg to one of the starter mounting bolts.
I haven't got one on my gear or transfer box.
Basically what you need to achieve is a good, low resistance circuit, going straight to the starter is ideal.
The starter is bolted to a lump of metal (the engine) and the gearbox is bolted to the engine so they are all one lump of metal.
Buuttt...if you bolt to the gear transfer box in a not so good place, you could have a higher resistance because of non ferrous gaskets and the like.
It's cheaper to fit a lead to the gearbox because it's shorter that's all.
Have you got an earth lead from the block to the chassis?
You could prove bad earth's by using a jump lead from the battery neg to the starter body, mounting bolt or block, somewhere that's paint free clean metal.

Oh, in reply to which bolt, one that don't go through rubber and gaskets. First one that comes to mind is one of the (4?) Bolts that hold the box mounting to the case.

If you have a fairly hefty jump lead you could run a temporary jumper from the battery to anywhere on the gear / transfer box and try it. That should confirm if you do need a better earth connection, although you can never have too many!

RiffRaffRevival said:

She's becoming a sod to start especially when cold/left standing. Reading through the various threads here it seems that the earthing points would be a good place to start.

However... I have two earth leads running from the battery -ve terminal, both of which terminate almost at the same point on the chassis! My understanding is that there should be a connection from battery -ve to chassis, another from battery -ve to gearbox (or a 'jumper' link between chassis earth point and gearbox), and one from the chassis earth point to the bulkhead. Is this the case for my trusty old 90 n/a - it's only the two connections above (battery -ve, direct-to-chassis) that I have at present!

Also, where on the gearbox should I connect to and does gearbox mean transfer box, or is there little difference for earthing purposes?

Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Whip them off, clean up the faces of the ring terminals, clean up around the chassis where it fastens down, clean up around a bolt somewhere high-ish up on the gearbox - pick a not too critical bolt in case in undoing it you start a leak, or another leak I should say. I used a bolt up near the turret somewhere. I have also seen people use a bell-housing bolt which.

I would just do this from the get-go, the time you spend faffing about with other things you would have done this quick job. Cover the terminal in Vaseline once clamped down.

Another thing to consider is the cables themselves and the crimps, LR used fairly bad cable on earlier defenders (mine will be a similar age to yours) it was sort of 16mm^2 with about 10 strands of wire per cable, this makes it very ridged and can over time fatigue the join at the crimp and break or crack the strands. Another thing that happens over the years is the metal inside the crimps can oxidise, increasing the resistance and thus lowering the current available for starting. Do the ring terminal and battery connections get hot when these long slow cranks take place? If the cables are a bit past it, heating them up and pushing a little flux then solder down will help to bond it all together again, however, this can also lead to cracking eventually if the solder flows along the copper wire and makes it all too ridged - so just flow a little in down near the base.

I had made up 25mm2 high strand count cables made up and immediately the engine roared into life.

Now try her.

Thanks guys... as always, amazingly helpful and informative advice from some of the friendliest people I've met
I'll get this job nailed tomorrow - will run a cable from the battery -ve terminal through the middle seat box and onto one of the gear/transfer box mounting bolts (in tandem with the one that's presently connected to the chassis), which hopefully, will do the trick.

Thanks again... have a great weekend and happy LR'ing.