Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Looking to try to identify the wires that go to the starter motor on a V8 County. Just replaced the starter and the motor turns over and starts to fire but as soon as you put the key back to the "on" position the engine dies.

Originally had a small white and a larger red wire connected by a 2 way female spade connector that was attached to the male spade connector on the solenoid. Wiring was brittle so cut them off and joined them both together and connected via a single female spade connector to the solenoid.

Have 4 other wires going to the terminal post on the solenoid (one of which is main battery cable).

There is another male spade connector that nothing is attached to.

Trying to identify what the red and the white wires are and if connecting them how I have is causing the problem.

When the key is "on" I get approx 10V at the coil resistor however if I left it on too long I noticed a faint smell of electrical burning. Car has been sitting for 3 weeks so not sure if its related to the wiring or something else that may have gone wrong.


cross posted in the Electrical section in case a more generic answer may be possible.

Went to bridge the red and green wires this arvo but stopped after I pulled the orange juice bottle (waterproofing) off the coil and saw several wires so I wasn't too sure which I should be connecting together. This is the wiring diagram I did up. Not sure if the red/green wires go direct to the starter but they go in that direction. There is another little silver cylindrical (resistor) box with just a single black wire going to it that's screwed next to the ignition module.



By the looks of it should I still be attaching the red and green wires and bypassing the white rectangular device which I am assuming is the ballast resistor.

Connected the green and red wires together, bypassing the ballast resistor. Turned the key to the ON position and the car would fire and keep running. Strange that I didn't have to turn it to START. Kind of proves that the coil is OK. Contacted Repco, they have a universal 1.06ohm ballast resistor in stock, $6.50. Will call by this arvo and see if that does the job. No idea what the rating on the original is as there was no writing on it.

Well the outside of the box said 1.06ohm and the actual resistor says 1.6ohm

Put it in and same problem, turn key to START and it fires, turn it back to ON and the engine dies.

Spoke to a mate tonight and he suggested the two way female spade terminal may have been a diode. He's going to see if he has a 12V coil and may simplify the ignition system.

Found the problem, there was a one way diode hiding in the small length of wire I cut off with the 2 way female spade connector. Just cut the green lead that was going from the starter solenoid spade terminal and it worked fine. Problem was that wire was feeding 6V from the ballast resistor back to the starter solenoid since there was no one way diode.