Hard start when hot

[jerry w]

Thanks, I will start to look at the wire and ground. I have a standard starter. Can someone elaborate on "heat soak" and some remedies?

[YerDugliness]

Originally Posted by jerry w

Can someone elaborate on "heat soak" and some remedies?

Heat soak occurs when the starter is heated up by the ambient temperature in the area of the starter. I had the problem with a Cleveland once...it would start fine when cold, but as soon as the engine was heated up it would act exactly like yours, struggling to turn the motor over.

A couple of suggestions:

You might be able to get the engine to turn more quickly if you trim off a couple of degrees of initial timing. If your car has a high compression ratio, the starter will be "challenged" without the heat factor, much less when it gets up to operating temperature (and particularly at the high end of the operating temperature range).

Here's what I did (don't know if you will be able to do this or not): I went to the auto supply store and bought a thick asbestos pad large enough to wrap the starter. I cut it to clear the cable attachment, wrapped it around the starter, and then cut a metal coffee can up so that I could wrap it around the starter on top of the asbestos pad. I used a large clamp (one for securing the exhaust hose from a clothes dryer) to hold the items together. Never had any trouble again, started VERY well regardless of temperature. I don't know if asbestos pads are still available or not....you might want to check a welding supply store, they sell various forms of heat shield materials that might make the job possible without the asbestos product.

One more thing....rebuilt starters are real problems where heat soak is concerned....get a NEW starter if yours wasn't. That might fix the problem real quickly.

Cheers from Dugly