[Healeys] Problem with starting/ starter motor?

[Derek Job]

My car was totally rebuilt 9 years ago, and has only done about 8,000 miles
since then. It has a high torque starter which was firing instantly into
life and starting the engine first go no problems. That was until last
night. Now I'm getting a strange kind of clicking, but sometimes it jumps
into life.

Experience with Healeys tells me that coincidences are rare and most likely
I have done something whilst messing with the electrics, which is exactly
what I was doing yesterday. My friendly, non-Healey mechanic had installed
my FIA cut out switch about 2 months ago. At the weekend I tried the
headlights for the first time and they didn't work. An extensive review by
me found he had connected one of the wires from the FIA switch to the
headlight wire that goes to the ignition!  I cut that connection and put
the headlight wire back to the ignition and bingo all my lights work again.
At present I haven't re-connected the wire from the FIA switch to anywhere.
It should go to the coil but I need to identify which coil wire as they are
all white coming out of the harness and into the ignition switch.

Anyway, that is where I had got to. It sarted Ok once or twice and I went
for a short run. Later on I tried to start it again and thats when I got
the funny noise, interspersed with it starting ok, which leads to me to
think its an electrical connection fault somewhere. They all appear to be
good connections at the starter solenoid and starter itself and Im
rechecking the ignition and starter buttom connections but how do I do
determine if it is a problem with either the solenoid or starter themselves?

Derek
www.healeysix.net