what are some of the give aways that Im suffering from heat soaked starter?

or could it be to much compression?

 

a dead give away is when you turn the key and you get nothing no click no nothing. and it does this for a prolonged period of time. and a bad solonoid is when you turn the key and you get a click but no crank. this can happen once or multiple times.

 

Car starts when cold and refuses to start after warn up and running car. Only starts when engine is cool.

 

the engine will still turn over but wont fire? and then after waiting for about 15mins..its fires right up...but still kinda hard to spin the motor?

 

No thats not a heat soaked starter. If it is overheating, you wont get ANY noise, rotation, nothing. But if you let it cool down for 10-20 minutes or so, the car will fire up nicely. What you have sounds like an ignition or fuel issue.

 

well that sounds just great!....how do I go about checking to see what it is?

 

I had the same problem after replacing my distributor without checking my timing. I found out I got incredible gas mileage... but it was making my engine bay too hot. Might give the timing a check.

 

well my engine bay is extremly hot also.....and I have a new MSD dizzy. Im getting crappy *** gas mileage.....LIKE BAD!....I had a full tank of gas when I first fired the new motor up and have only put 40 miles of driving and maybe 3 hrs of run time and have about 1/4 tank left. I have used up almost 3/4's of a tank ...so what the hell up? Ive been having a timing problem with not being able to set my timing the correct way...so I used a timing with with advance buttons on it. I have to set it with everything connected to about 29* advance while idleing and then when I take away about 24 or so degrees with the gun that brings me to 6*...and a friend of mine says then my timing should be right.

Im at my wits ends with this motor. all I want is for it to run right and not have to worry about anything.

Im just trying to figure out why it wont fire back up after running for 15mins.....then I will deal with the timing issue and everything else...I'll take it to a tuner or even down to Fbody in Charlotte and have them look at it.

but I wanna know what wrong with the cranking issue.

someone above says it could be ignition or fuel..what do I check? if it one or the other?

 

Before you worry about fuel issues I should have said this before.

Get a friend to help you out with this. Next time your car doesn't wanna start, have a buddy look under the car, at the point where the gear from the starter contacts the flywheel/flexplate (take off the plastic dust cover first so you can see, there's no harm in running the engine without it.) Tell your friend to see if the gear is actually popping out of the starter and coming in contact with the flexplate. If the gear is not making contact, and the flexplate isn't turning, you found your problem, bad starter. Go to autozone and get a new one.

If however, the gears are meshing and the flexplate is turning when you try to crank the motor over, then your starter is not the issue. Start worrying about fuel then. On your fuel rail, there is a check valve that you can hook up a fuel pressure gauge to. You wanna make sure you have about 40-45 psi of fuel pressure. If this number is too low, then you know where to start looking. You can get a fuel pressure kit at your local auto parts store.

As far as ignition goes, to see if you are getting spark at idle, hook up the timing light to each wire and see if it lights up when you crank the motor. If you find a wire or two or three, etc that aren't lighting up that timing light, then you are not getting spark to those plugs.

If your problem ends up being the starter and you are worried about it happening again, they sell starter heat shield wraps at summitracing.com so go ahead and check it out.

 

Wait a minute,

..You replaced the distributor, and your problems surfaced. My logic problems magazine says that you need to revisit that distributor. It sounds like it's too retarded and everything is heating up.

BTW, why did you choose 29 degrees as your assumed timing advance? How do you know the engine is advancing 29 degrees? You are making some assumptions here that may be incorrect. Even the MSD can have the advance circuit disconnected so that you can look at initial base timing. You need to find that wire and disconnect it to see if six degrees is truly six degrees.