My brother has a 79 camaro. when we bought the car it had a 355 in it but was mostly stock. We had the opportunity to buy a built 383 for a fairly descent price so we did. When we were pulling the 355 out we noticed there were a ton of shims on the starter (over a 1/4 inch), but it worked and didnt seem to be a problem starting the 355. We went ahead and put the same flexplate and starter on the 383 and dropped it in. The 383 fired right up with little to no effort so all was good. A few days later my brother got in it and started it up. It was a little colder that day and this 383 is a little cold natured, so it died. He started it back up and revved it a little bit and it shut off again. He tried to start it again and it was as if the battery went dead. We put a battery booster pack on it and it was trying to turn over but would kick back as if it was out of time or something. We know it wasnt though, because it ran fine prior. Basically we haven't gotten the engine to turn over and try to start since. We took the 153 tooth TCI flexplate off and switched to a CSI 168 tooth flexplate and put a new mini starter on. Still won't turn over. It literally acts like the engine is locked up, but we can put a half inch ratchet on the crank and spin it with little effort. We have checked basically everything besides tearing the engine apart, which we are trying to avoid. We are really hoping it isn't something internal that it wrong with this thing.

This camaro is a dirt racecar so it doesn't have the stock key ignition on it. It has a switch for the ignition and a spring loaded switch to start the engine. The motor is a 010 block with an Ohio Crankshaft 383 rotating assembly. It has JE flat top pistions. The cam is a comp mechanical flat tappet cam with the correct lifters, pushrods, springs, etc. The heads are 062 vortec heads. The motor is supposed to be 10.5:1 compression. Everything has less than 100 miles on it (3 races). Im not sure what other info is needed, but I can provide any additional info needed..

I'm just seeing if anyone has any tips/ ideas to fix this problem.

Thanks, Jon