Slow cranking when hot

[TraviZ28]

sbc in a Camaro, when I crank it while hot it is either slow cranking or it only cranks once or twice. Letting it cool off before it cranks fine again is a pain in the ass and I dread turning it off after I have been driving a while. It is a Hitachi high-torque mini starter. It is about my third one in a relatively short mileage amount of time. I have a good thick I think 2 gauge cable from my battery straight to the starter with a equivelant ground wire straight from my engine block back to the battery.
Am I just getting bad starters due to heat soak from my ceramic coated long tubes or is there anything else I could try to save these starters?

[Thephranc]

Wrap it in a starter blanket. Sounds like heat soak.

[Heleanor]

Yep, what he said. Also try attaching the ground wire directly to a starter bolt. Ensure the face of the starter is clean as well as the block surface it mates against in order to create a good ground path.
How for is the header tube from the starter?
Mark.

[rchaskin]

Timing too high??

[First Bird]

I recently had a battle troubleshooting a hot-start problem too. In the end, my alternator pulley was too big. This was undercharging my battery.

If you've gone through 3 mini-starters, sounds like your starting system is not supplying enough voltage to the starter. When this happens it can damage the contacts in the starter. Then the damaged contacts in the starter make for hard starting too, even after you solve the low-voltage issue.

Hot-start issue has MANY variables: Heat, poor grounds, poor connections, damaged contacts in the starter, low voltage in the starting system, low voltage in the charging system, bad battery, timing. Be open to the idea that your problem has more than one cause. For example, I found my battery was bad. This was caused by the trickle charger being bad, so I got a new charger and battery. I STILL had a hard start issue. Then I had the mini-starter rebuilt and it was better but within days I had a hot start problem again! Thats when I diagnosed the low charging voltage and swapped to a smaller alternator pulley.

[minendrews68]

What kind of motor? I once had a LT-1. The way they're set up they sound like a diesel when you first start them up.(loose tolerances in the cylinder because of forged pistons) I set mine up with a little tighter tolerances and once it warmed up the forged pistons swelled a little making the tolerances too tight. resulting in hard starting when warmed up..

[70Uglybird]

Mine did the same thing and it was a high initial timing. Bought a aftermarket distributor and was able to get the initial down and total where it needed to be and now it starts up "OK" I think I'm going to move the battery back up front, that and get the damn fan on a 12v switch source rather than the temp sensor for turn off and I think I'll be in business.

Like everyone says lots of reasons for it but I thought I'd share my experience which was frustrating to say the least!