Hi all,

Ok, well the hot start problem is back again in my 1970 Elky SS 396. The elky is completely stock. I cleaned the ground wire from the battery to the motor block, still no good. The wires on the solenoid are tight, so that cant be the problem. Timing is between 4 and 6 degrees at idle with the idle at 800 in park and the vacuum advance disconnected and pluged. When the engine is hot, the starter seems to bind up and not turn the motor over. When its cold it turns over normal. One weird thing I noticed tonight is that the battery posts get very hot to the point I burned my hand when I touched the top of the posts. The battery cables were also very hot.

What would solve this hot start problem? And what is causing the battery terminals and cables to get hot?

I have an aftermarket starter heat shield on order from The Paddock since Year One and Ground Up GM originals were discontinued.

In my latest issue of Chevy High Performance, they installed electric solenoid remounting kit. Lets you remotly mount a solenoid away from exhaust heat. It called the MAD Enterprises Start 'M Up kit. there website is here (http://www.madelectrical.com/catalog/st-1.shtml) Don't know any one whos used it, but sounds like a good idea.

i agree with onick about your starting prob when hot. Heat soak is killing your starter. As for the wires on the batt, the heat could be from a short. Having electrical problems??Fuses blowing, lights working at all times, etc. I doubt it is from the heat of the engine. Basically the more current is going throught the cable, the more heat. Save a battery melt once in work. If you smell sulfur while standing near the battery, shut it down .

If the solenoid energizes it has nothing to do with the key circuit and a remote solenoid won't fix it.

There are 2 possible problems. You have a bad connection or the starter motor is just going bad. If a wire or connection is getting hot that's a fairly good sign that it's a bad connection. But, as already pointed out, it could be because the starter motor is going bad and drawing much higher currents than normal. The only way to know which one is to measure the voltage at the starter motor and the current going through it. Measure the voltage with ead on the case and one one the big bottom solenoid terminal, you can do it cold. To measure the current, you need a DC current probe or take it to a place and get it tested. If you have low voltage check the connections further. If you have decent voltage but high current its the starter motor.

Peter

I want to keep the car a concourse car (trying to get it that way now). So a remote area solenoid is pretty much out of the question. As for any electrical problems, none. Everything is working fine. The only problem I have noticed is that when the headlights are on, the turn signal blinks slower than when the headlights are off. Probably a grounding issue which I will have to find.

About the battery cables getting hot, I do not notice this when the engine is cold so it is a possibilty that the starter is shorting out when it heats up causing it to draw more amps than when it is cold, in turn making the battery cables heat up. Maybe I will go to my local parts store and check into another heavy duty rebuilt starter.

Brian,

Do you have a high torque starter installed? I drove my 69 all summer long in the DC heat and never had a problem until I replaced my starter motor because of a cracked housing. The parts store only had one starter listed. As it turned out it was a regular starter. After a few days I started having the same problems as your describing. After many phone calls, new battery cables and a couple starter motor changes I finally learned that GM made two starters. A regular and a high torque. The high torque starters were installed on all big block engines and hp small blocks. I used the part number for a 69 Corvette big block and presto, no more problems. You can identify a high torque starter by the spacer between the solenoid and the ground tab that comes through the starter case. This spacer is approximately ¾” long that the screw to the solenoid goes through.

Good luck,
Bubba

You didn't say whether or not you replaced the battery cables, only cleaned the ground. I would REPLACE both battery cables first if they are over a couple of years old. You'd be suprised what a difference a new cable can make. Only costs a few bucks.......

Then move on to the starter.

Good luck! graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Bubba,

The starter motor I have is the high torque one. There was two different solenoids used on the starters. One was a standard duty which is a smaller solenoid and a hi temp / hi torque solenoid which is the one that you are describing. You can also tell that my starter that I have now is the correct one because the brown bakalite is molded with a circle saying hi temp on the back where the studs stick out. Im hoping a universal heat shield will help solve this problem. If not, on to a new starter solenoid, then a new starter. I am also in the process of getting the original "Spring-ring" type battery cables for my car. Currently someone has replaced them with the standard bolt clamp type.

I had the same problem yr.s ago.Replaced starter all done and with a heat shield :D

I guess with the heat cause's the armature to expand,then drag starter down.

Good luck with heat shield defenately worth a try though.

Resq302,
Coming in a little late and not sure what you did the first time. But have you checked the other wires to your starter? I think there is a yellow and purple one. On mine the wrap around these wires looked good, but once I took it off the wire coating was brittle and cracked in several places. I replaced these wires from the top of the firewall down to the starter with a new protective coating and put a heat shield on my starter. I have not had any issues since.

Brian,
Been thru it all, The last stop I made a couple years ago was to the auto Electric shop that builds starters for very large engines. I told him the problem. He brought out a High Tq starter and said if it did not work, Bring it back and he would build me one that he knows would work under any condition. The high Tq has worked great.

Ok,

thanks for all of the suggestions. I got the heat shield in today which is an alluminum one with some heat shielding / reflecting matterial sandwiched in between two pieces of alluminum made by mr. Gasket. It covers the solenoid and starter. I will be either putting this on tomorrow morning or on monday when I am off from work. I will let everyone know how this works. If it solves the problem, as soon as Ground Up comes out with a "correct" heat shield, I will swap it out. I will keep everyone posted as to what happens.

Originally posted by 1BadRat:
You didn't say whether or not you replaced the battery cables, only cleaned the ground. I would REPLACE both battery cables first if they are over a couple of years old. You'd be suprised what a difference a new cable can make. Only costs a few bucks.......

Then move on to the starter.

Good luck! graemlins/thumbsup.gif I have to agree with you Mark. Both on my 396 and my 460, I was having problems with hot starts. From advice right here at TC, I replaced the cables on the 460 and the problem vanished! So I did the same on my 396. Problem solved again.

Don't forget the battery. I had the worst hot start problem you could imagine. I got stuck one time in traffic in 100 degree heat for an hour. When I went to restart he car the battery terminal clamp literally melted, it was drew so much current. My headers, unfortuneately are sitting right on the starter.

I got the heat wrap which helped a little bit. I changed from 6 guage wires to 2 guage with a good clean ground (to block, frame and body). Then swithed from a 425 CCA battery to a 750 CCA battery. Starts every time - never another problem. Less than $100 for everything. Your starter may just want more juice. Hope this helps.

Ok,

Seems that the problem was solved with a rebuilt starter which had the hi temp solenoid on it. I also installed a heat shield from Mr. Gasket that has some sort of asbestos type material sandwiched in between two alluminum pieces. The shield covers the solenoid and the whole side of the starter. Now I just need to fix the charging system problem with it. Post on that topic is on here also. Again, thanks for everyones help with this and hopefully someone might be able to pin point the problem now with the charging system.

Brian,i have been driven & working on those chevy's (Esp BBC) with and without headers for 32 yrs+ and have found (All from 1st hand experience) that if all of the following i am going to list below are working at 95-100% all is fine. But if you have 1 weak componenet i have listed below the hot starting issues creep in and get worse as time goes on and if you have 2 or more weak componenet at one time your dead for hot starts,period.

For example,if you'r running a 3 yr old battery,5-8 yr old worn starter & alt they can all be working up to 80 % capacity but thats not good enough at times to start a hot high compression BBC or SBC for that matter (esp with headers) so keep this in mind.

The 69 396 chevelle i have owned for 26 yrs has all the stock starting/charging system components and always starts when hot,even in 90 + deg f weather. This is becasue i made sure that all the items mentioned below were rblt correctly along with a fresh 800+ CCA battery to ensure it would start hot.

I am running a mild perf cam with 222 int Dur @ .05 112 L/S that does not bleed off that much of my 9:8:1 compression which is also set to 18 deg btdc for intial timing and still starts when hot with all that intial timing.

The remote selonoids mentioned in the above posts can help but if you prefer to NOT have a FORD looking starting system then i would get your stock componenets in order to correct he problem.

* Fresh alt at a minimum of 60 amp. (for faster battery recovery inbtween mult stop/go starts)

(I had my stock alt upgradded to 80 amps.)

* New OEM battery cables with clean tight/clean connections.

* Clean ground connectiones between car to frame/motor to frame.

* Fresh hi torque starter with good clean tight connections.

(Watch out for cheap rblds that put low torque armatures in hi torque casings.)

* Hi temp h/d selonoid .

* H/D Hi temp selonoid spring.

* Starter heat shield

* Tight alt belt that does not slip on alt pulley when loaded when ligts,heater,etc are on.

I have had many people over the yrs say evrything is ok and they can't figure out why the motor wont start hot,thats when i always through some questioning find out that they felt their battery was good enough etc when it wasn't ok when i came down to it. Thats when i find at least 1 or 2 components that are not up to the task and convince them to replace them and Wala,the problem is gone after that. Now thats when they say but i thought the 4 yr old low powered 500 CCA bettery and original 25 yr old virgin starter was good enough ,it wasnt and never would be accept for maybe a 4cyl vega if they were lucky.

So it's really up to you if you want to invest money in your ride to make it start reliably and not have a non stock remote selonoid under the hood that looks like a Ford setup,YUK!! Most of us have big bucks in our chevys so whats another $100-$200 to make it start reliably using the stock componenets and keep it all GM and stock looking too.

A trick to help you out in the meantime would be to hook the ignition (coil) power wire to a toggle switch in the car so you could kill the ign when cranking hot. Killing the ign at times will be just enough the let it turn over,and when it starts to spin over ok then flip the ign switch back on and it will fire right up. But dont spin too long with no ign becasue it could backfire when the ign is turned on if loaded up with fuel.

This will likely not work if you have a real tired starter,battery,etc,it only works for situations where your componenets are at least funtioning at like an approx 75% level.

For an emergency remove the coil power wire or coil wire itself (if your brave enough) and have someone crank it over so you can then re-attach the wire and the car should start.

If all else fails dump a bucket of cool water on the starter and wait a min or two and then it may cool off enough to spin over and start with the coil power and or coil wire removed and proceed from there as mentioned above.

Let us know what you decide to do and how you make out.

Scott

Scott,

I got a reman'd starter which had the hi temp solenoid on it like my old one. When I put that in along with the new heat shield which covers the solenoid mostly and completely covers the starter, the baby starts right up now and runs great. Sometimes, it cranks over slow but if I turn the ignition on and off and do that a couple times it then starts cranking smoothly. I will double check the timing as it might be a little too far advanced which could cause the slow cranking when it is warm.

BRiAN,glad to see your hot starting problem imporved with a fresh starter & heat shield. see what happens when you took care of one piece of the starting component puzzle,things got better. Is your starter a high torque,look for a copper spacer over a long bolt that goes through a wire loop on the started casing that protrudes from the inside of the starter to outside the case and screws into the lower portion of the selonoid. If the copper spacers over the long bolt is not thete it's not a high torque starter which is a must for any perf BBC/SBC.
But you still have an occassional hot start problem left to deal with and now it's time to finish the job by going after your alt & battery as long as your starter is a true high torque starter.

You mentioned it still sometimes cranks a little hard when hot,make sure your alt is putting out it's rated amps and also ensure your battery is fresh,rated for at least 800CCA,and passes a full load test with flying colors. If either of these is not at 100% they will cause your occassional hard hot cranking especially when making multiple stop/starts in a short period or time.

Alos,you mentioned possibly backing off the timing but the 14 deg btdc you stated your already at is on the retartded side for an avg perf cam. As i said before,most mild to fairly stout perf cams needed on avg 16-18 deg btdc intial timing so you actually need to try cranking in a few more deg to see how the motor responds to that while listeing for detonation to be safe.

If the motor responds well to the additional timing leave it there and if your hot cranking gets a little worse (which it likely will) it shows you still have a weak link or 2 (batt & Alt) left in the starting system to correct .

If you know someone that has a new/fresh 800CCA + battery maybe you could test it out in your car for the hot start problem because i bet that this one of the last things affecting your hot starts. If you don't have a tester battery and your battery is a few yrs old and was not rated at 800CCA + to begin with just take the plunge and replace it.

My firend had a 1yr old champion 1000CCA battery and he had too a hot start problem with his ride. He had new alt,new h/t starter,h/d selonoid,heat shield,etc and was going to go for a $200 mini starter and he argued it could not possibly be the battery at that point only being a yr old and it always spun over good when cold.

I convinced him to try the Delco repro 800CCA battery out of my car and put it in his and WALLA,the problem was gone which shows a fairly new 1yr old battery thats rated high @ 1000CCA can be defective and not up to the task so keep this in mind for your battery.

Also,have a reputable shop check your alt to ensure it's putting out the full rated volts/amps too because if not rbld it. If it's a 37amp like mine was it's marginal at best and realy not up to the task of replenishing the battery during mult starts in short time periods. So have the alt upgraded to at least 60 amps while your at it,i had mine pushed up to 80 amps in the stock casing and it does a great job.

If you don't get these last 2 item's squared away you will at times still have a hot start problem which will degrade over time and get worse. On top of that you will be also be loosing power/performance,wasting fuel, and the motor will run hotter too all due to your timing being retrded too much trying to bandaid your hot start problems caused by weak starting componenets.(Batt & Alt)

If your at 14 deg btdc now as you stated and your retard the timing more down to lets say 10-12 deg btdc when it should be approx 6-8 more advanced this could loose you a substantial amount of power/torque on some setups,maybe 20,30,or even 40 H/P or more. It's your choice at this point to bandaid the hot start porblem by retarding the timing even more or opt to keep all your performance with the advanced timing for the perf cam and go after your battery & alt at this point to get things cleared up.

If you running a bone stock GM cam then the 14 deg btdc your at would be too much and would need to be backed off to the stock 0-4 deg btdc (depending on motor) but you never stated if your running a factory stock or replacement perf cam so i assumed from the start it was a perf cam because you already had 14 deg btdc intial timing cranked into it.

Let us know how you do if you replace the battery and get your alt rblt/upgraded to 60-80 amps.

Scott

Scott,

Thanks for the loads of info. Never knew all that could be problems. Anyway, the alternator was just rebuilt but it seems that I have a bad voltage regulator so that could be a problem being that the repro original style battery might not be getting a full charge. Prior to me noticing the volt. reg was bad, it was putting out 12.28 volts which is when I had the alt. rebuilt to save the date coded casing.

The car is a 1970 Elky SS 396 which only has 44,000 miles on it and it is going to be a concourse car. Needless to say, everything on the car is stock as it was the way it rolled off the assembly line.

As for the starter, there is a copper tube that is attached to hi temp solenoid that bolts onto that metal tab towards the end of the starter motor casing that goes inside. I assume this is what you are talking about.

The next thing is the repro'd delco battery with the caps on it I think is rated at 700 CCA. This battery is not even a year old but like I said earlier, it could be that it is not getting a full charge from a bad voltage regulator.

I tested the alternator by the procedure in the book which ruled that the volt. reg was bad and when I did the jumper test from the alt. to the battery, the voltage started jumping up like crazy from 12 to 16 volts almost instantly. I should know more about the charging system by tomorrow since the new repro volt. reg. is in from Ground Up Resto. The elky is fully loaded power wise with factory A/C so the alternator is a 61 amp alt with a heavy duty battery also.

As for the cam, it should be stock as it does not appear to have any lobing of the idle as a performance cam would like in my 69 Charger.

Again, thanks for the bundle of info and I will let you know how the new volt reg turns out.

Brian,it sounds like you have things well under control now with you hot sarting problem.

Also,i can't believe i totally overlooked the volt reg when i was doing alll my rambling on about all the components needing to be working properly for thses BBC's to start ok when hot.

Since you say your running a stock cam i would definately back off the timing from the 14 deg btdc you were running to the stock factory setting which is approx 0-4 deg btdc,a couple more deg like up to 6 btdc would not hurt.

With your the stock fairly mild cam the cylender presssure will be somewhat high (esp hot) due to short overlap so all starting system components need to be at or near 100% for those hot starts problems to go away for good as i can see you already know and have a handle on.

Sounds like you have nice original 396 Elky,my 396 chevelle is a very original car too
that i have owned for 26+ yrs now so i know how you fell about wanting to keep your Elky looking like it did in 1970 when it was built.

Happy motoring....Scott

Scott,

This car is all virgin metal on it. Zero bondo as it was an original Florida car then was moved up to Wisconsin and garage kept till my father and I bought it in Feb. Now we want to get it to be a concourse correct car as it is mostly or very close to concourse already. I will have to try and get some pics taken so you can see. Pretty much the thing looks like a skunk, triple black with white hood racing stripes. Stock everything, it still chirps tires going into second gear.

Brian,i cant wait to see some pics of your nice stock looking Elcamino,i need to figure out how to load up digital pics of my chevelle onto this site.

till next time....Scott