I have an 84 Z28. My care won't crank once the car is hot. I changed the terminal wires, the alternator, the starter, and the battery. The car originally had a 305, but now it has the Edelbrock performer RPM package on a 355. I have had this problem since I first bought the car with the 305. I have had 3 starters and 2 or 3 alternators and I think 2 batteries, 2 positive terminal wires, and one new negative terminal wire.... NOTHING!! I can't figure it out. The problem happens once the car is warn... around 180 degrees, and I have to wait till it cools a little to start it back up again. The timing is at 14 degrees... so it's not that. I had an electrician look at the car.. and he said that the starter motor seems to be "drawing" power. He said that that happens b/c it is becoming hot. I can understand that happening b/c of the headers I have on the 350, but the 305 was stock and I had the problem. I did find, though, that some of the wires coming from the starter were getting chewed up and grounding themselves. I fixed the wires, changed the starter, and still have the same problem. It's driving me NUTS! I even bought an external syllenoid for the starter, so now there is only 1 wire going to the starter... the fat terminal wire. Didn't do a thing. I put a cheesy heat shield on the starter syllenoid... didn't help. What else is there to do??? Any Ideas??

Thanks,
John

 

did you actually cover the starter itself???? u should.. electric motors work ****ty when hot!

Steve

 

What do you mean?? With a wrap?? I just ordered one from Summit. Don't know if it's gonna help though.. I hope it does. Any other suggestions?

 

BTW, Thanks for the tip, Steve. I am hoping you're right.

 

hey no prob- i know we ran into this problem on the race car cuz we run full length headers. even though we ran the mini starter, we still had problems with hto cranking... so i think that should be ur problem. you could also wrap the header for that portion but i doubt you would want to do that if it is a daily driver and can get wet.. header wrap will rot the pipes...

Steve

 

Cool.. thanks again for all the information!!

John

 

hey are you running the same distributor and ignition module that you were running in the ohter engine if so your ignition module may be getting hot and breaking down..

 

No... different distributor.. this one is vacuum advance, so it doesn't use the stock computer.

Thanks,
John