Starting a 6V Morris 8 with a 12V battery

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Starting a 6V Morris 8 with a 12V battery

Why?

• A cold morning, with cold oil in a cold engine will take a lot out of my 6V battery but I have a bunch of 12V batteries hanging around the garage.
• A flat battery when you're away from home and the only other cars around who could help with a jumpstart have 12V batteries.

The starter motor is quite happy with a 12V battery, and in fact performs so well it's even a good idea.

The ignition coil doesn't like 12V without a ballast resistor but it will work.

Most of the other electrics won't work too well on 12V, and some may be damaged... but you can prevent this by switching as many things off as you can (especially 6V lights).

So if you do run a 6V system, here's some ways I've started it up with a 12V battery.

Using 12V Battery to loosen things up and save 6V battery power

It's quite possible to hook up a 12V direct to the car and turn the starter over. Simply disconnect the 6V battery and connect a 12V in it's place and pull the starter knob - Don't switch the ignition on though - you don't want to start the motor, just to turn the oil over. People often recommend a cold engine gets a few turns with the starting handle, but this can turn it a bit faster!

Then remove the 12V connections, reconnect the 6V and start as normal (only slightly easier).

Using a 12V Battery to jumpstart the car

This is possible by temporarily making the car a 12V system - everything switched on gets 12V.
The ignition coil doesn't like 12V but it works - same goes for the petrol pump. Try and minimise what is switched on (ie trafficators) and doubly make sure the lights are off (especially if they were the cause of a battery drain and the switch is still on full beam!).

You connect the 12V battery in place of the 6V one (as above) - he only difference is that you switch on the ignition so that the car starts.

The main problem is that after you celebrate the fact your engine is working and - if you got a jumpstart from a friendly passing motorist - you are saved, as soon as you disconnect the 12V battery the engine will die. The only possible way around this that I can see is:

1. You connect the 6V battery earth (with 12V still connected)
2. A helper revs the engine
3. You disconnect the 12V live and connect the 6V live as instantaneously as you can - the idea is that the 6V will have enough charge for the spark before the engine, and distributor, stop rotating. 
4. Then just keep the revs up to help charge the battery.

The best way - 12V starter and 6V everything else

This is a method of "hotwiring" the ignition - i.e starting the engine without using the ignition key in the dashboard.

Provided you have a spare wire to use then this is the best way- it doesn't send 12V through anything *except* the starter motor... provided you switch everything off, of course - the lights and ignition.

I have a wire which is just right to connect my battery to the ignition coil:

One end is deliberately left as stripped wire ready to wrap around the battery terminal - in such a fashion that the battery connector can still be put on and the hotwire subsequently pulled off. Make sure it's not loose enough to fall off though.

The other end has a spade connector (my ignition coil has both screw terminals and additional spade connectors which is handy) which goes straight onto the live terminal of the ignition coil.

Then connect the earth wire to the battery - and your coil will be live.

Now we need to connect up the 12V battery to the rest of the car - 12V earth to the chassis (along with 6V earth) and 12V live to the normal live connector but not the 6V battery.

Now it's all connected, go inside and you'll see the ignition key is off but the ignition light is on... incidentally this ignition light is the sort of thing that really suffers if you jumpstart with just 12V.

Start the car with the ignition OFF and it should start with the ease of a 12V starter. Once started you can disconnect the 12V battery and *this* time the car will carry on running. On my car the ignition coil is connected directly to the petrol pump, so my carb doesn't run out of fuel. If this isn't the case on your car then you will probably run out of petrol within a minute or so.

 With the car running simply reconnect the 6V connector:

then switch the ignition ON and then pull out the hotwire. It is only loosely  wrapped around the battery terminal specifically so it can be pulled away easily.

Put the wire back in your toolkit and you are prepared for a 12V jumpstart.