Quote:

before you go changing anything i would do a voltage drop test with a quality DVM. this will show you where the losses are and if that is the cause or part of the problem. is the starter pinion in proper mesh with the ring gear?

on start retards i learned the hard way that more retard isn't necessarily better (like i "thought" it would be). with a locked distributor and crank trigger you can back the timing up to the point where it starts firing the wrong cylinder...yea this causes problems.

as for spring tension remember that the lobe has two sides a noteworthy amount of that energy is returned when the valve is closing.

Quote:

I guess I could run 2 in series, if I needed to?



32 volts...GET ER DONE, i know you meant parallel



I would only run 2 batteries as a last resort, and pos to pos and neg to neg wiring if I were to go that way. Is that parallel? I'll look into the dead cell battery thing, the extra neg. cable to the battery, and my different starter before doing anything else. I will say that trying to turn it over by hand is a biatch!