[Steeveedee]

FWIW, I put on one of those little starters from the speed shop, added ground straps and even ran the battery ground cable all the way to the starter, and it still has trouble sometimes. I'm thinking of installing a water spray device to cool the starter when I stop for gas. It's generally when I'm towing the travel trailer when we go camping, so I just don't shut the engine off when refueling. This problem is endemic to these trucks. Maybe it's like gas tank size design. When I graduated high school (1970) and went to work for the local Chevy dealer, the Vega came out. I asked one of the salesmen why it had an 11 gallon tank. He told me that the tank was sized for making sure that people stopped every four hours (about 250 miles at an average speed of 65 MPH) for gas. That would be based on the worst mileage that could be expected for a given vehicle. With a 19 gallon stock tank, my truck with a 402 CI engine getting 13 MPG would fit that bill. Maybe BS, I dunno. On a test track with a woman 5 foot nothing tall driving at a constant speed, it might have gotten 13 MPG.