Electrical smoke when trying to start

[foxycanuck]

Was trying to start the van in -15 today, had to turn it over a fair bit, but before it caught I noticed some smoke wisping out of the front. Turned everything off, popped the hood, huge ozone reek and some smoke drifting up.

Any ideas of what it could be? I'm imagining the starter burning out, or something going wrong with the glow plugs? Everything else is shut off, so the only other thing I can imagine is the daytime running lights (LED, Mardy put them in).

I'll get it into Kirkham this week and hope for the best... hopefully nothing too serious.

[jessef]

Disconnect the battery first.

Use your eyes and nose to find where the electric burn is coming from.

Check the fuse box. Sniff sniff. The closer you get to the burn source, the stronger the smell will be.

The LED lights pull such small watts that it's probably not them.

Check the main fuses at the battery (positive +) in a little black box. Use small flathead to pry a tab at each side open.

Stick your head in the engine bay. It will probably do you good to remove the intercooler to get a better idea of what's going on.

It could be a simple thing as a positive wire touching ground/shorting out.

Report back !

[thedjjack]

Starter motor or relay from the long crank is where I would look first

[madmazda]

or starter motor.... or the connections to it something could be loose and be arcing I've had to crank my van a TON before I bought new glow plugs and the starter got a bit warm....

[MardyDelica]

hi, it could be the battery terminal sometime time to time battery got loose
check on this one pls

[foxycanuck]

Battery terminals were clean and well connected, fuses were good. Burning smell was coming from pretty deep in, and we aren't building our garage until summer so I took her to Kirkland.

Starter was in rough shape... terminals badly corroded and loose. They cleaned and tightened everything up but it was working intermittantly. Sent it out to be rebuilt.

In the end:
170 to tow to Calgary
410 in labour (2h to remove starter, half an hour of fiddling, 1.5 to put it back in)
350 for the rebuild
taxes and shop fees brought the total up to $1050.

That is one expensive damn starter. The guys at Kirkham did do a good job on it though.
It's weird that something as simple as the starter, and something you'd expect to access from time to time would be buried so deep in the L400's

Is there a haynes type manual for the L400s? I have the one that is online, but it only shows the exploded parts. I'm usually good to do something on my own, but if I need to start ripping a bunch of stuff out I like to have a procedure in front of me so i know what that extra bolt is, and which things I need to take off and which ones I don't.

[MardyDelica]

wow $410 they charge you for that
that is so expensive
i charge only 1.5 hour or less to removed the starter.
complete rebuild starter is $220 with 1 year warrantty.unlimited kms.
to clean the corrosion part of the wire is just make it 1 hour. ad it up together with the labor when removing & installing starter.
i dont know what to say,
its so expensive
cheers;
Mardy

[thedjjack]

3.5 hours to re & re a starter? Did they pull the motor and transmission out and then take off the starter?

WTF?

[foxycanuck]

Apparently they are buried pretty deep in the L400s. Don't know if they guy at Kirkham had done one before either, and they pretty much charge straight time on it. Given that I'm gonna try a shop in Okotoks next time I need professional help.