Replacing the starter motor

[tiptonjuk76]

First time poster, long time lurker, so please be gentle with me.

I think the starter motor on the wifes 2003 Cooper S has gone. It started with an intermittent issue where the car would take 4 - 5 turns of the key to get going, but now when I turn the key it doesn't even try and start, but doing a push start turns the engine over and off she goes.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get a new starter motor tomorrow but I can't see where it's located.

Can anyone point me in the right direction, or point me to a DIY guide on how I can change the starter motor, or atleast to its location.

Cheers

[Graham1978]

i think I have the same problem... can anyone give me a clue as to where it's located in the engine bay?

[ScottyBoy]

Its at the back of the engine under the exhaust manifold...

you wont be able to see it as you will have a heat shield above the manifold.

to acces it will be from underneath.

[DANDEL]

I recently suffered a non-starting Sept 02 Cooper. I had all power functions and in fact the battery was reasonably new but no turn over when the key was turned, with some assistance a bump start easily got me running so I assumed the Starter to be faulty and not the immobiliser.

A call to BMW elicited a cost for the supply and fit of a new motor to be about £500.00, which I could not afford, so I called Euro Car Parts who offered an exchange Lucas unit for around £100.00 that I bought. I then looked on here for some advice on how to fit it and could not find anything so I hope this helps someone.

I am a reasonably competent DIY’er with a large and small socket set which were adequate but a second long extension would be useful. It would also be useful if you had arms and fingers like matchsticks but with the power of an Olympic weight lifter!

I put the front of the vehicle up on ramps, but subsequently found that it was useful if the O/S front wheel was removed, how you achieve this I leave up to you. The only real point for being off the ground is for sighting, there is not much that can be usefully reached, and the higher the front is the harder it is to reach over the engine! Disconnect the battery.

Looking down from the top at the back of the engine you will see a heat shield over the Starter Motor (SM) (the SM is about the size of a baked bean tin with a smaller cylinder strapped to the top side of it placed just left of the battery box but at the bottom of the engine. It is easily viewed from underneath - but not reached) The shield above the SM is secured towards its left hand side by one 10mm bolt that you can reach down through the manifold pipes. Once the bolt is out this shield slides to the left off of its two locating stud’s on the SM flange and is free.

I wasted a lot of time trying to carry on with the job whilst leaving this shield floating about – don’t bother – it is quite soft so scrunch it up a bit and remove it through the o/s wheel arch taking care not to catch any wires on the way through and with it out of the way the job was much easier. My scrunching was easily straightened when I put it back in position.

I did remove the green plug from the sensor that you can see just through the wheel arch to get the cable out of the way, the little red tag you can see on its end pushes through and then the plug will pull off.

Disconnect the three cables to the SM, the small one is held with a 10mm nut which can be reached from above, then there are two more on one terminal held by a 13mm nut again reached from above. This just leaves the two bolts securing the SM to the engine, which are quite tight. The bottom one can be seen from below but can’t be reached for any useful spanner movement. This is where the second long extension comes in useful because you can come straight in from inside the o/s wheel arch onto the bottom nut. The second nut is on the top of the motor and partially obscured by a cable. I got this one out from above with a combination of a universal joint on the socket and 1½ extension bars but I put it back as for the bottom bolt reaching with a longer extension through from the wheel arch. The nut size is 15mm or 19/32 AF.

Assembly is as they say the reverse. It took me about 4 hours in total but a lot of it was time wasted struggling to avoid the floating heat shield once I gave up and removed it things were much easier.

[Stigsdump]

Thanks for the heads up on refitting. I've just taken the top bolt out to remove the gearbox,,,as you say very difficult to access. I was wondering how to get it back in until I read your post.

I've just bought a 2ft extension bar for the wrench so it should make life alot simpler