I dont know what happened the other night, the car started fine, turned the headlights on (cause it was night) as soon as i did this, the engine stalled and headlights (and parkers) turned off. went to start again, and nothing was powering, had no accessories, starter motor wasnt kicking over, but still had hazard lights, and curtoesy lights. after about half an hour it started again, but once again as the headlights turned on, the engine immediately quit as did the lights. hasnt started since, whether key is on ignition, accessories or starter motor.

Car wont clutch start, bypassing the ignition barrel does nothing

Towed it home and checking over the car, battery shows full charge, i doubted it was the battery as it was cranking over quite healthily. Now i'm waiting for the rain to stop before i can continue

Going through the wiring is proving annoying, but traced the wire as from the ignition to the starter motor, the thicker 1/2 blue 1/2 yellow one (which is covered in oil from an oil leak that i cant find). I might have guessed this would be the problem, except that it would have nothing to do with the no accessories and no ignition

Tried following the ignition wire (green with white stripe), i lost track of the wire in the wiring loom, but found a wire of same colour and thickness that was roughly headed the same direction, but theres no continuity there, but it could be a different wire, and even if it is the right one, it shouldn't explain the lack of power to accessories (or might it?)

I havent yet seeing where the problem is down the accessories wire yet so dont know if theres a problem there.

All the fuses are fine, even the ones behind the battery, the battery terminals are clean, as are the contacts to the cobles leading from it. The earth wire from the block is in good nick, havent checked the eart wire from the chassis yet though.

Anyone got any other ideas on what i should check?

Have you checked the alternator?

This sounds exactly the same as the problem I had with Vickys 340.
It a bad connection on the plug at the back of the fuse box. Every time a cleaned and reconnected it would work for a while.

It was hard to trace as when you remove the plug off the ignition barrel there is power there - when you put load on it the voltage dissapears!!!

I sorted this by running a new wire from the battery to the ignition barrel.

I hope this sorts your problem.

i would agree with dai....i have changed a couple of GLT fuse boxes before because of this problem

on high-spec versions with lots of electrical accessories, one of the connections between fusebox and in-car wire loom is prone to fail due to overloading.

pulling a new wire would be an effective solution.

Yes, that's a good one. I'd check that first

I'll give the fuse plugpacks a go, when i saw the power side was ok i have been thinking its a bad earth, so had checked all the earth points into the fusebox.

I dont think its alternator, its had a full rebuild mid last year and works very well.

Edit:Might make that cable up while i'm waiting for battery to charge up. Is it me or are maintainence free batteries crap, i seem to get maybe half a year out of them and they go flat if i havent run the car in at least 3 days. Could go a fortnight and not need a charge with non maintainence free batteries.

Update: Had the batteery half charged and hooked it up, and ran a cable straight to the ignition barrel from the battery, accessories worked, ignition worked, and starter motor worked, just waiting for the battery to fully charge now so i can get it running.

Here i was thinking it was a dud earth cause it was showing +13v at the ignition barrel, cheers classicswede, that would have taken me a while to work out as i had ruled out 'ghost charges' cause it was a new battery...

Battery charged and hooked back up, car started first crank, thanks guys!!!