Hi all,
I have a 72 with a stock 350. When cold the car starts great. When it’s hot and I try and start it seems like the battery is dead but will turn over and fire up then run great. Sometimes it barely starts at all but does. I thought I read somewhere it could be a bad starter.
thx for any help

 

This could be a linked to a few things.
Battery capacity
cables and their connections
starter
starter solenoid

I feel its likely any one or all of these items could cause your issue. You'll need to dig a little deeper into each component by testing them. Are you familiar with diagnostics?
You'll need to load test the battery and use a voltmeter/ohm meter these.

Or You could throw a bunch of new parts into this and replace all of them and hope for the best. That'll probably fix it for good.

 

I have a new battery and new cable ends on the battery side so I’m assuming I can count those out as it didn’t change. Not sure how to test the others but I’ll look into it.

 

Those can be a source of trouble as corrosion can build up between the copper wire strands and the cable clamps. I do not like using them due to all the trouble I had with them through the 80s.

 

Over advanced base timing can also cause hard hot soak cranking. What do you have your base or initial timing set at ?

 

Sounds like heat soak to me. I had this issue on a 330 with headers, much worse than yours though as I would have to let the car sit for 20 minutes more or less in order to get her to run again. So my gut says the starter is responsible, even though you are stock manifold setup... maybe your starter is getting tired. Do you know how long since it was replaced ?

In any case I would definitely go over everything as others have suggested first. Work your way up the expense ladder... For example, you don't want to spend 200 on a battery when all you needed was another half turn of tightening on the cables...