My Bird runs great for a Ponmtiac with a chevy 350 engine (came with the car).

However, sometimes the car doesn't want to start. It acts like the battery has been drained and it turns over very slowly. It is like the starter motor lost all its torq.

This only happens if I turn it off and try to restart it after about 5 minutes when it is at normal operating temp.

If it sits and cools, it starts fine.

Bad starter?

I seem to remember a thread about this, but can't find it.

could be the starter. make sure both battery cables and connections are clean and tight at both ends, and free of corrosion, including under the insulation. replace cables if they are old.

if new cables and a new starter doesnt help, you may have to put a remote solenoid (ford) to keep it from getting heat soaked, and/or insulate the starter and solenoid from the engine heat with a shield or insulative wrapping.

if you had said Pontiac engine I would have asked if you have headers...the solenoid on the starter usually gets overheated , no idea on chevy engines ,if its similar... but prob. not...
otherwise Ames sells a heat shield for $10..

It's the unhappy Firebird spirits inside your car trying to kill the evil transplanted Chebby engine.

Put a real Ponitac motor in it and I'll bet you the problem goes away.

OH, it's definatly the motor a Pontiac would never do that !

until I, installed the gear reduction starter on my heat soaked Pont. , mine would do the same thing. but now with this g/r starter ,hot or cold and a 800 c.c.a. battery, she spins over faster than a married woman with a head ache. Get-r-done

just an idea.
but it could be a timing adjustment also.
i have had several high compression chebby's
that have done this, and usually moving the
distributor a smidgen will help.

does it turn over steady and slow - or-
does it turn over really jerky ?

Yes, retarding the timing will help it start, but as mentioned it is starter heat soak. High compression engines with weak starters, poor connections, old cables, or marginal batteries will often exhibit this.

You can buy better starter solenoids (abt. $30) or a good starter (abt. $200) or just wait a while for it to cool. Heat wrap for the starter seems like a bad idea, but the metal heat shields that leave an air gap work okay.

the reflective type is supposed to be okay, not the header tape type. I haven't actually done it, so was just relaying what i have seen others do. I missed the timing/compression angle... or weak battery... d'oh.

my Torino used to do this after i replaced a burnt starter with an autozone one. It could have just been the cable connection... i just put it in neutral and revved it a couple times as i approached wherever i was getting ready to shut it down. it cooled it off enough to work fine.

i put a high torque starter on the E350 and now it sounds Mopar-esque i think i got a defective one or fried it though. sometimes i have to hit it with a hammer
The old one was heat soaking due to bad cables i think. the high torque was sitting on a shelf, so it got used w/ the new cables. It would heat soak badly until i jumped the integral solenoid and went back to the one on the fenderwell. I want to put a regular Ford starter back on it.

I've been having similar issues with my '68 that has a 355 Chevy in it. Put in the high torque starter and all, but that still only helped for a little while. However, if anybody's been following any of my other posts, I'm in the works of getting a new Pontiac motor to drop in there, so hopefully the problem will be going away...

The high torque starter makes no difference with heat, only with compression and timing. The solenoid is in a poor location and seems to degrade from extended exposure to heat. It's not a problem if you don't do frequent short trips.

The "mini" starters don't seem to have the heat issue, and can be removed with headers and long branch manifolds. They just don't look stock, and are a lot more expensive.

Thanks for all the ideas.

I do have long-type headers. The battery connection is clean. I'll check the starter connections this weekend. A heat shield might be the solution.

The Pontiac 400 is still a few years off, but it will go in eventually.