The Lost Art of Choke Adjustment | The Online Automotive Marketplace | Hemmings

Approximately 25 years ago, when electronic fuel injection started showing up on new cars, one of its selling points was the elimination of cold-start issues blamed on the carburetor. That mindset always confused me: All of my carburetor-equipped vehicles started and ran flawlessly, regardless of the weather or ambient temperature. But there was a caveat attached to that reliability: The choke had to be adjusted properly, and the manufacturers never pointed this out when talking about EFI versus carburetion. In its rush to move to EFI, the auto industry was throwing the faithful carburetor under the tires of the proverbial bus, and for no good reason.To this day, many enthusiasts believe that a carburetor-equipped engine will be hard to start on a cold day, that it will act balky during warm-up and generally not drive like a modern car until it reaches operating temperature. This could not be further from the truth, and this misperception was the impetus for this installment in the Los...