is it cranking slowly or turning over slowly i was think your starter might be heat soaked from your headers

 

my 70 mach w/ a 302 does the same hard start kinda thing...i usually hold the pedal to the floor, fires within a few cranks...

 

If the starter gets hot(if it's the big fat old school style that weighs a kajillion pounds) it'll expand internally and the starter will rub on itself and crank the engine slowly, making it start hard. If it turns over really slowly, then the starter is most likely at least part of the problem, if not all of it. Add a bit of vapor lock to that and you get hard starts

 

Where can we get a heat shield for our starters? Over the past few years moderating this section I guess there are at least half of the guys here who have hard starting problems, and about half of those are the starter getting too hot related. The other is vapor lock.

 

I'd venture to guess that the prolem with overheating starters occurs most often with headers. If headers are indeed causing the problem, hence the vehicle is no longer stock anyway, I'd suggest a hi-torque mini-starter. In addition to having more cranking power and being smaller, many can be clocked to rotate the starter as far away from the exhaust as possible.

 

soaring yes there starter head shelds look on summit or jegs. theres many ways to fix it wrap the headers or ceramic coated headers a mini starter that likes head or the starter sheild on a stock style one. i run a mini starter and ceramic coated headers mine fires on the first crank.you said you built the engine do you know the compression higher compression on a cold stock starter is hard to crank.

 

FYI... the engine cranks at a normal rate. I have the smaller, high torque starter. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to evaluate the accelerator pump today. If it were a matter of just starting the thing I could have gotten to it,but I have to heat it up, and then linger around for it to act up. I've been tied up watching a webcast of a men's barbershop chorus that is defending their world-wide international title in the annual competition. Dad and I have been involved with this group since 1978. I took a couple years off. They sing with 160 guys on stage, and are on the stage at the Pepsi center in Denver as I type. From a world of competitive groups, they are competing among the top 30. Music fans would enjoy it. The car will have to wait tonight... wish them luck! Check them out at AOH.org. It's a fun group.