[Greg Reimer 7376]

Thank you all for your contributions. All of them certainly do apply to GM Hi Torque starters. All your suggestions were good ones. Heat certainly applies to starters, relays, and all other matter of electrical things. The truck has new cables. I converted it over to the 24 S style battery about 15 or so years ago.I also fabbed up and installed an auxiliary battery tray for it and installed it on the driver's side of the engine compartment across from the OEM tray. The auxiliary battery has a long cable that connects it direct to the positive post of the battery in the factory tray. The auxiliary battery has a shorter cable directly connecting the ground post on the aux battery to the alternator bracket. That's directly bolted to the driver's side cylinder head. The ground from the main battery is bolted directly in the OEM configuration to the AC compressor stand. The main battery cable from the OEM battery goes down to the 3/8"stud on the starter. The starter activation wire came off the solenoid, runs through a tubular heat shield behind the engine on the right side away from the right exhaust manifold. I had added another wire to that post, ran it through the heat shield and up to the firewall near the distributor, pulled it through a grommet, and ran it under the dash to an auxiliary push button switch to assist with hot starts. None of the original side post battery hardware or cables has been there for some time.As I had the starter out a time or two recently to search for this hot start issue, I noticed that the wiring through the tubular heat shield looked pretty bad from an insulation standpoint.I went down yesterday and bought a 14 foot roll of 10 gauge insulated copper wire and some eyelets. I began by soldering and crimping the eyelets to the ends of the wire, fed both starter engagement wires through the heat shield with the new battery cable that I bought, finish tightened my starter and all the terminals, then located the 10 gauge purple wire from the ignition switch, cut and spliced it all very securely, then hooked it all up. I have an auxiliary push button switch under the dash, that was part of my hot start problem elimination, but the button had gotten so hot inside it had come apart internally. That's next to replace. Right now, the truck starts so well its hard to believe its the same truck. All I gotta do now is replace the auxiliary push button. Another thing I noticed, the two battery ground cables attach to the engine. It seems to me that a better path to ground could be achieved by getting a battery cable with two eyelet connections on it, like a Ford starter cable, then attaching one end of that to a good dedicated ground on the engine and the other end directly to the frame, plus at least a 10 gauge wire auxiliary ground to the body from the frame. That is to prevent any voltage drops from occurring anywhere in the system. Right now, the truck starts and works better than it has since I bought it. Seems like getting back to solid basics here cleared up a lot of things. Thanks for the tech advice!