starter heat shield...aluminum or blanket?

[rpcraft]

In theory, that’s a good idea because of the reflectivity of the shiny gold material. In application, there’s so much filth that accumulates down there that the gold isn’t going to shiny for long.

That stuff works great on race cars that are torn down after every event, but not so well on street cars.

I guess that is a good point. Maybe not the gold foil but they do have another kind of sheild material that is made for transmission tunnels but its a little thicker and insulates. Maybe that and the sheild. I'd just avoid the blanket simply because if it is a daily driver then you are going to have that blanket collecting moisture and I don't even want to imagine what hot mess that will turn into.

 

[smoothandlow84]

Well...I ended up installing a aluminum heat shield and the heat soak issue is gone. It was a bit more difficult than wrapping the aluminum blanket stuff around the starter, but overall the problem has been resolved.

 

[highdesertrange]

hot start = ford starter solenoid. highdesertranger

 

[rpcraft]

Is there a how to somewhere in how to do this. I am a little curious, if only because I am running open headers on my LS swap and I imagine that at some point I'll have to fight this fight. I had it on my old 77 with blackjack headers and I really got tired of laying in the autozone parking lot to swap out starters (although I did get good at doing it, even in the dark)...

 

[rpcraft]

Wait, just googled this.... So does this essentially just provide a jumper from the main connection on the starter to the solenoid on the starter???? And then you run it though another solenoid to trigger both? I thought the idea was you no longer had a solenoid at all down on the starter... If you still have the solenoid on the starter how do you still not have the same problem with just an additional thing to go wrong in the system?

 

[highdesertrange]

the factory solenoid is hot wired straight to the main battery cable with a short piece of wire. then a ford starter solenoid is out on the main cable. the wire that used to energize the stock solenoid is moved to the ford solenoid. another thing that you must do is move all the wires that go to the starter except the main cable to the hot side of the ford solenoid. now the main cable to the starter is normally dead(no power). when you hit start the main cable gets hot and also energizes the factory solenoid. this is a quick run down I have to run to work right now I will check back later. highdesertranger

 

[rpcraft]

So is it safe to assume that the power loss on the original solenoid is heat on the smaller wire and not just heat on the solenoid? It seems that if jumping from the main terminal to the solenoid connection (on the starter) that indicates that GM just never had a large enough gauge wire to power the solenoid to begin with (in essence), correct?

 

[highdesertrange]

yes and the age of the wire is also a factor, but I found that even if you put a new wire on it sill might do it every once in a while. actually I like it because it takes all those wires off the starter where they are hard to get to and moves them up to the new solenoid were access is easy. in the end you only have the one fat wire going to the solenoid. highdesertranger

 

[rpcraft]

yes and the age of the wire is also a factor, but I found that even if you put a new wire on it sill might do it every once in a while. actually I like it because it takes all those wires off the starter where they are hard to get to and moves them up to the new solenoid were access is easy. in the end you only have the one fat wire going to the solenoid. highdesertranger

I agree that is a bonus. Makes it so if you do have to change the starter you can dc at the solenoid, drop the bolts to the starter, and then transfer the wiring on the starter, and feed back up and reattach from above. Much better than trying to reconnect under the header, most certainly.

 

[rpcraft]

I found a good kit from Allied performance that I am going to incorporate into my LS swap that was only about 35 bucks and it includes the extra battery cable and sheet metal screws to attach to the firewall! If you go to their website they want almost 80 but at Amazon they must be an affiliate or something.