Tony,
I just went to the gallery and looked at your rig..nice looking truck! As I recall, this particular setup did tend to heat the starter from the exhaust and cause a slow crank situation.
Your truck would probably have a ballast ignition resistor ounted somewhere on the firewall, or near the distributor. During a START, this is bypassed, and the coil should be getting full battery voltage.
The typical resistor failure would be "Start, but won't run". If you have the funny ceramic looking ballast resistor, you should have either two wires at the + of the coil, or two wires on the coil side of the ballast resistor. You want that full system voltage present to start the truck.
Your latest note above hints at a fuel problem when hot. Your gallery writeup indicates you have a big old four barrel carburetor on the 283.
It could be that your carburetor is leaking, or dripping fuel into the manifold after the engine comes up to temp. Is there a problem between a long trip with the system warm as opposed to a shorter trip with the system warm?
Make sure the choke is operating properly..open fully when warm. By mashing the throttle all the way to the floor, and leaving it there for awhile before starting, you open the primaries all the way and after the fuel evaporates from the initial "mash", you allow maximum air into the rig which sometimes offsets a over-rich fuel situation and gets the engine started.
Too much info..end of novel!
Stuart
