[carbking]

A comment about electric chokes, also chokeless operation:

First, in case anyone found this thread by search rather than browsing forums, this thread is in the "street" section, not the "race" section.

The electric chokes I know are useful to help start an engine if an aftermarket intake without the provision for an automatic choke is used AND one wishes some form of automatic choke.

MAYBE, someone has designed an electric choke with a temperature sensor so that the WOC (wide-open-choke) can be tailored to the temperature of the engine, but if so, I am unaware of it.

I learned my lesson with electric chokes almost 50 years ago when my wife's daily driver had an issue with the hot air choke, needed the car, and I didn't have time during the week to change exhaust manifolds. Installed an electric choke. After having the car towed from the stop sign three blocks from our house, where the engine stalled and would not restart, the week-end appeared, and I changed the exhaust manifold and reconnected the factory choke and no more problems. Incidentally, the wife was not happy about the 3 block walk (twice)

Basically, that choke was timed. The calibration was about 45 seconds from full closed to WOC. With the STREET carburetor calibration I use, the engine would not restart after stalling a minute after starting with no choke.

That brings me to chokeless operation. I use a calibration that gives decent performance, but leaves a few percent horsepower unavailable for the benefit of fuel economy. Both my GTO and my shop truck cannot be driven in town in the winter with no choke. My calibration is simply not that rich.

I have a RAIV intake with no crossover on the GTO, so the factory choke could not be used. I tried an electric, and had to restart the engine at every stop sign! Finally gave up, and threw on a carb factory designed with manual choke. End of problem.

The shop truck has dual quads. I use manual chokes on both.

Even when the choke is open, the presence of the choke plate IMPROVES driveability in town, as it acts as a straightening vane to "straighten" the eddy currents in incoming air.

Jon.