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Car has been sat for at least a year. Battery is in the boot and it has a 40 dellorto with no choke. It takes a lot of cranking to get enough fuel to the carb. as it runs dry.

Charged the battery and managed to get the car cranking really well.

Got it to fire but them stalled then nothing. No lights, blower motor or ignition

Checked fuses all looked OK. Checked continuity on them 1 was a little dodgy. Replaced it and still nothing. Pulled the bulkhead connectors off to check. One term was a little green rest ok.

Checked battery. Has 13V between terminals.

Thoughts please........

Is there a thermal link in the loom?

Well if you have lost battery power i would start by cleaning the battery terminals and make sure they are tight, then check the battery, engine and body earths for good contact, it might have overheated while you were cracking leaving a bad connection.
also check the battery lead connection to power, good luck

Thanks. Think I will need it. Battery is on charge now.... May have boiled it. Poor thing

Battery lead to power? not sure what you mean by this...

billy_bunter wrote:Is there a thermal link in the loom?

Not sure about yours as it's obviously been modified to have the battery in the boot, but mine has two thermal links next to the battery box. "One of the links protects the lighting circuits, whilst the other protects the remainder of the electrical system with the exception of the starter circuit.", according to the electrical manual. It does say that prior to 1974 there's a single fusible link.

All you can do is trace the power through until you find where the continuity breaks down. You know you've got voltage at the battery, where's the first point you don't have the same?

I guess if there's poor continuity along the extended battery cables that could cause it to pull higher current and maybe burn out the thermal cutout, in much the same way that my compressor will blow fuses if I run it down an extension lead in colder weather, where it works perfectly well connected directly to the wall. Does it still crank over?

Thanks for the feedback gents. Had a quick visit earlier today

Battery is OK after another charge. Shows 13.4V and 4.96A. Connected it up but no power anywhere.

-ve battery term to body shows continuity. Could not check continuity on +ve as did not have wire long enough.

Fuseable link is the 2 terminals to the right of the fusebox? This has continuity.

I think the car has one of these fitted or something very similar.

https://www.autoelectricsupplies.co.uk/product/1111

I assume this has fried or the circuit feeding it is not energising it. I borrowed a battery pack and put the positive on the battery pole of the solenoid and still nothing. However not sure if I had the ignition on at the time....

I ran out of time and light so will have another go later in the week. Take some sandpaper to clean all the earths and solenoid contacts and some jump leads.

If you can't find a long bit of wire to do a continuity check, you can always just probe for +ve at each point when you get to the engine bay, just using a light bulb. Stick the earth on something local, and the other terminal on the various steps along the current flow until it goes out.

Got her running tonight...

I think it was a combination of -

flat battery,
poor main earth,
too much haste after I got the battery charged and back in.
My inspection light went flat.
All aggravated by the old boy who's car is next to mine chatting incessantly .
In my tinkering I left the main live connection from the fuseable link off the solenoid.

All the above excuses absolve me totally of the last error in the list

Thanks for all the replies helped no end.