I'm thinking about switching over to a manual choke

[machinereplica]

Any advice? My friend has an 83 CJ7 and he said it helps a lot with starting the vehicle and driving in general. I have an electric choke and it never seems to work properly. Should I just cope with it because I'll never have a good fix or switch to manual choke? How difficult is it to install?

 

[Old Dog]

If the electric one is bad, I would go manual, it's an easy job and YOU get to control it.

 

[machinereplica]

How hard would it be to install though? Like a couple hours or so? I'm in the Army and currently in language school for russian so I don't get the most time in the world for this stuff.

 

[Old Dog]

It's just a matter of taking the old electric one off and running a cable through the dash to the carb.

 

[machinereplica]

Shouldn't be too hard if I can get my hands on a good drill then. I live in the barracks so I have Limited room for tools. Thanks for your help.

 

[DREDnot]

What have you done toward fixing the automatic choke?
Millions of them are functioning properly and are really the cats *** when in working order. They are really simple devices if you do a little homework on how your particular system functions.
It may also be a symptom of a bigger problem in your carb that should be fixed first and a manual choke will only mask the real culprit.

 

[machinereplica]

Well I don't have the money to replace the carb, so the manual choke is a temporary fix. The electric choke has some problems with it. I've had it adjusted for the idle like 3 times and it never works.

 

[BajaEdition]

adjusted the choke for idle?
I am not the best carb guy, but I thought we got the air ratio correct and set our vacuum, then set the idle screw for idle, choke is jsut for starting the vehicle when cold. Am I missing something here on carbs?

 

[machinereplica]

You might be right. It weird though. Starting it when is even a little cold outside takes at least two attempts to get fuel going and then it takes it a long time to get warmed up and just idle without me pushing the gas a little bit. When I first bought it the idle would automatically set for 2000 rpm when it started up but after that it would go back to normal or sometimes even shutoff. I replaced the fuel pump and the fuel line. Could it be my sending unit? It's not a big problem or anything, just irritating.

 

[DREDnot]

Seeing as how there hasn't been any new carbureted cars manufactured since around 1986, it seems like carb knowledge is becoming a lost art.

I was an 18 year old apprentice tech at a chevy dealer in 1985 and was lucky enough to be taught how to rebuild and set up rochester quadrajets by a very talented master tech.He taught me that a properly rebuilt and set up Q-jet is the finest carb there was.
If you call it a "quadra-junk", you didn't follow the directions on the sheet(all of them)

I can't begin to go into the details of "how to" here but the main secret to getting any carb to cold start and drive till fully warmed up is in the automatic choke settings and the choke pull off settings and sequencing.(assuming the carbs jets,bleeds, and metering rods are not gunked up)

here is a video to get you started and then view more of the related videos

YouTube - AUTO REPAIR: Carburetor Choke - Testing & Replacing

hopefully this helps you

 

[DREDnot]

By the way, I just got my carb kit today.
I'm hoping to use my old skills to turn this YF (off an old Ford 300)
with hacked on manual choke

Into something more like this with properly operating automatic choke

 

[dalefan88]

i put a manual choke on mine and it start a hell of alot better in cold weather.

 

[BajaEdition]

well anyway, in 1976 when I took a trade course in automechanics, I spent 18 months, 7 hours a day in that class and it convinced me I did not want to be a professional mechanic, but the knowledge it gave me has really helped in my love of old autos and Jeeps. I was never the guy to really mess with carbs and fuels systems, I preferred other aspects of the trade. So when I come off and ask a question about carbs, I really mean it. I love Fuel injection and mess with injecting everything I rebuild.
Currently I mess with propane injection systems, I have one for the 67 I will be putting in soon.
So, getting back to the carb choke thing. I understand how and why a choke works, and why some guys prefer a manual choke. But isn't a problem cured by a manual choke masking a problem with the carb?

 

[DREDnot]

isn't a problem cured by a manual choke masking a problem with the carb?

Yes , absolutely.
Since that vehicle drove off the lot new without issues, you gotta figure something has gone wrong since and ,if found, can be fixed.

Automatic chokes are just a bi-metalic clock spring that relaxes and unwinds when heated. Some are heated electricly and some with manifold heat. about all that can go wrong with one are the spring getting funky(or breaking) and not moving at the original rate(or at all) or the source of heat is compromised.

A new electric choke spring/housing assy. and power at the proper time(usually when the engine starts) is all you need for the choke to work.
If it still won't run right, the choke system is not the culprit, but funk
in the carb keeping the correct amount of fuel(air and/or gas) from reaching the carb bore.

Its most often sticky brown varnish or that white crusty stuff that is blocking or resticting the metering jets, air bleed jets/tubes, and metering rods/needles.
The only way to clean a carb properly is by totally disassembling it and dunking all the metal parts in one of those gallon cans of caustic carb cleaning dips.
(The one we used at the Chevy dealer was a five gallon sized tank with an air powered agitator that swished it back and forth for a half our to an hour)
You remove it and rinse it with hose pressure water and dry it with compressed air making sure to completely blow out ALL the passages, bleeds, and jets.

 

[dslywalker]

Hey Baja do you program your own chips when messing with injection?Sorry about the hijack on the thread
Mike

 

[BajaEdition]

I know there are chips you can program your self, and chips you can buy programmed, The ones bought programmed are the way to go. The reason I say such is they take in acount for the cam timing , valve diameter, compression ratio and other factors such as gearing and others the engineer looks at and decides where he can change a curve efficiently and with out doing damage to the engine. Loading an engine up and leaning it out in places it needs to be set to different parameters can destroy an engine. Sometimes programing yourself you can not take in account for something and slowly cause deterioration that cannot be reversed without a tear down.
Unfortunately I learned this the hard way when I did Land Speed Racing. After every run you pull sparkplugs and read them, I would be getting great readings but would have some really bad interior engine combustion chambers each winter during tear down season. It was not until we decided to buck up and do Dyno time that we saw where we were actually hurting our engines. In the curves where variations that we learned were where we were not doing as well as we had hoped.
So, since then I have bought a chip to do as I wanted, such as in my Crossfire, or I have sent off the vehicle to have tested on a dyno to get the result we wanted. Now seeing how I had a partner paying for that it did not hurt that much.
But that is in closed looped monitored systems, in a open system where the computer is not changing with the readings it is a lot easier, but then you are basicly running an expensive carburator for the good it does with out being a closed loop.

 

[dslywalker]

Yeh I'm running a howell system and it needs just a little more tuning.When you find someone to do it they want to sell their system and yours is junk.So I've been studing on it but would sooner leave it in the hands of a pro that could do mine.
Thanx Mike