Do you have a choke setting for summer and another for winter? Or do you simply have one that works adequately for both?

JamesC

 

A carb with a well-designed system, such as a Q-Jet on a mostly stock-ish motor, will work basically perfect in practically any weather that ever occurs in the continental US, except maybe if it's above 10,000' altitude or so.

Aftermarket carbs, which obviously aren't near as tailored to the engine they're on most of the time, might take more fiddling. But if the basic calibration and tuning of the carb is right to begin with, and of course if it's correctly selected for the engine (mainly if the idle system is capable of feeding enough fuel at however low vacuum the cam creates), it makes dialing in the choke MUCH easier.

IMO.

 

Usually on very old carbs with heat riser elements. people used to adjust the choke coils tighter in winter and looser in summer. But more modern carbs like 80's & 90's Q-jets with electric chokes used one or more vacuum choke pulloffs to deal with precise control of the choke during warmup. So as long as they are adjusted and in working order, you should have year-round decent choke performance.

 

My winter setting is under the cover,in the barn,see you in the spring.

But,I drive it from April to early November and haven't touched the choke since the carb came back from the re-builder 3 years ago.

 

The electric choke on my Edelbrock is adjusted to work year round. I haven't changed it in years.

 

My grandma never touched her choke that I can recall (shut up, you perv) as long as I can recall. She just turned the key and drove off. (NE IL area, outside Chicago) No doubt LOTS of other grandmas got along just fine too. My grandma's grandma used to talk about her Model T, and after that, her Buick, before the big crash, in the 20s... she went to the grocery store in the winter, and church every Sunday, same as everybody else. Choke didn't seem to be much of an issue.