Here is the plastic former for the solenoid winding. My newly aquired Digital thickness gauge says the wire is 0.35mm diameter so ebay calls.

Just finished unpicking the solenoid coil which was indeed well melted. The heat had even melted the thermo plastic former. Took me an hour to remove the copper wire which had fused in the centre of the coil and for the total thickness.

I'm off to the Dentist!

[quote user="yachadm"] Mine measures 8.89 ohms, but resistance is never the correct method to check for shorts in a winding like this. If there was a short, then the resistance should be less. Graham reports 11ohms, so it just proves that resistance is not the correct tool for diagnosis (but he could also be using a less precise ohmmeter.

Thanks for you help. I spoke to Tim Jarman last night and as soon as I mentioned smoke, he was adamant that the solenoid would be the problem and caused by the switch not activating, thus holding the solenoid at max voltage for too long. He indicated that the situation had possibly been happening for some time and the windings finally gave out in despair

[quote user="tournedos"] But are you actually sure that the solenoid has melted? Probably is, but it would be a lot of work for nothing if it isn't... perhaps you could test it by disconnecting it from the rest of the circuitry and feeding it some 20-30V from a current-limited power supply (or through a suitable resistor, car light bulb

I am not surprised that the plastic blob disintegrated and fell off. The design of the fixing was particularly poor with a very small amount of plastic left to hang on to the spring and the only tension that it is under in normal use is that provided by the switch spring itself. I have fixed a plastic blob (cut down foot from a Beolab 2500) onto the

I have found the black plastic laying in the bottom of the box. It has broken such that it will not stay on the switch. Will need to fabricate a plastic widget to either fit on the switch or possibly fit on the arm. Could possibly araldite the original to the switch but I am not in love with that idea. What do you think?? I will need to think about

Getting better at it!

I will get the hang of this posting photos on day!