has anyone thought about installing a "Ford" style solenoid on the fender near the battery
I did that up to the point when I installed a Delco Permanent Magnet Gear Reduction (PMGR) "Mini" starter. The mini-starters DO NOT LIKE the "Ford solenoid" trick. They don't disengage cleanly, so they drag and grind when you go from "Start" to "Run".
I was thinking it may be heat related?
Of course it's heat-related.
considering adding a ground cable from the battery cable on the frame to the engine block.
Strange. I'd expect the negative cable from the battery to be connected near the front of the engine, on what used to be the fuel pump mount.
Does this model (1990, C1500) have an accessory position in the switch? There is one position forward where nothing happens, I have to have the switch "on" to operate the radio.
Turn counter-clockwise from "Off-Locked" to "Accessory".
Clockwise from "Accessory" is Off-steering column locked, Off-steering column unlocked, Run, Start
You need to wrap that starter so it wont get cooked under the exhaust.. Doesn't matter if you have headers or not. Summit and Jegs sell a flexible cloth starter heat shield
Hateful product. Does as good a job at keeping heat IN the starter as keeping exhaust heat away from the starter.
Use a
metal heat shield, so the starter heat has a convection path to escape.
The stock heat shields up to my year (89) were small, and only covered the solenoid... and it was metal also.. so it heat soaked anyway.
That's all it needs, if everything else is working right.
Some folks with headers install a larger heat shield. I bought one like this from Summit, about a thousand years ago.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/mrg-3678
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I have to get under it this weekend and do some checking. There is no ground LARGE ground from the frame to the engine block. Only the small braided cable down near the starter. I intend on adding a "starter" cable from the frame to the engine. That seemed jicky not having one.
WHY would you need a BIG ground cable from frame to engine block?
The BIG ground cable goes from battery to block, and many other electrical loads ground THROUGH the block back to the battery. That's why there's only the small braids from frame or firewall to the engine--the loads they're grounding are small, unlike the ~200 amperes of the starter draw.
Heat soak is not necessarily the starter motor being too hot.
It is a known problem that the "s" wire (keyed hot) at the solenoid gets to hot.
When a wire gets hot, the resistance goes up and it will not conduct enough to turn the starter.
When it cools a bit, it will.
The cure is to install a ford type solenoid that relocates that wire away from the heat.
its called a "hot start kit"
Summit has them for about 75 bucks but you can make you own cheap.
Been a chebbie problem since about 1958 or so
When you buy a chevy, put gas in it, drive it home, and put a hot start kit on it
I have done that, and it works if you don't have a mini-starter. At least, it wouldn't work properly on the GM PMGR starter I used.
The factory style mini starters don't seem to need hear shields.
Yeah, they do. The heat shield on my '97 also protects the
knock sensor and the wire harness for both the starter and the knock sensor.
It has to be an issue with the starter/solenoid or associated wiring/grounds which could include battery cables all the way back to the ignition switch.
Well, my starter went dead again today AFTER I got home. About 10 minutes after I was home needed to make a quick run. No starter. After it set for another 10 to 15 minutes the starter worked just fine. At this point I'm 99% sure it is a heat related issue with the starter solenoid.
While there are other possibilities, the "usual" problem is that the wire harness deteriorates a little bit at every connection, and at the contacts at every switch. There may not be excess resistance in any one place, but given about a dozen connections and contacts in the circuit, the overall voltage drop becomes enough that the solenoid won't engage due to too little amperage being pushed by too little voltage.
The VERY FIRST TEST you need to do is to perform an open-circuit voltage test across the battery. 12.6--12.7 is fully-charged. 12.5 is low enough to need recharging. 12.2 is half-dead
The SECOND test you need to do is a voltage-drop test from Battery + to the stud on the starter solenoid "S" terminal, with the key turned to "START". The + lead of the voltmeter on the battery + post. Negative lead of the voltmeter on the "S" terminal. The starter should be cranking. You'd want to see LESS THAN 1/4 volt (0.25) on the meter. High voltage showing on the meter means you have high resistance in the circuit. If you're lucky, you have one failing contact in a switch, or one failing connection or one failing wire. Otherwise, you've got fifteen partially-failed contacts and connections, and you'll have to chase them all down.
Or use the purple wire on the "S" terminal to control a relay that supplies power through fresh wire and new contacts to the S terminal.
When this was me, I had a poorly-repaired "purple" wire that corroded black and green from the "S" terminal back about 15 inches. The previous "repair' was a section of wire about six or eight inches long, with a cheap crimp to connect it to the original wire. Since there was no access a foot back in the harness due to firewall clearance problems, I installed a fresh wire about three feet long from starter solenoid "S" terminal to the accessible part of the wire harness bundle. Crimped, soldered, shrink-wrapped.
If the solenoid clicked, but the starter didn't crank, there'd be a different procedure.
dad had me pull the starter and he rebuilt it. Brushes were shot IIRC, but he put a new drive and solenoid on it too. Worked great for the rest of the time we drove it.
Yes, starters have a bunch of wear points--brushes, bushings, solenoid, armature, field coils can all go bad. I keep brushes, bushings, the leather washer, shift-forks, and a starter drive in my parts cabinet. I don't think I've got a solenoid, though.
