I'm having some trouble with the electric choke on my Holley 650 vacuum secondary, electric choke. It's installed on my 1978 360 in my '68 Barracuda, and it's a very mild engine. RV cam, headers, dual plane intake, the car idles dead smooth when warm. After having it disconnected for two years due to a hokey wiring job (thanks, past me!) I finally put it back together in a more acceptable way and was reminded why I was okay with disconnecting it in the first place.
When I cold start the car in the morning, with the choke closed and the fast idle cam on, it runs stinky rich and very rough. Like, black smoke out the tailpipe rich. It also tries to idle at about 2,000+ rpm. If I go and manually open the choke just a little bit (it seems like there is too much play, should I be able to do this?) the idle smooths out a little and the RPM picks up. After idling for about a minute it comes down to an acceptable and more smooth fast idle, and once it's warmed up it runs just fine. What's going on here? I thought even with the choke plate fully closed it should run smooth when cold.
I've taken a video of this predicament, here is the link:
I fussed with it yesterday, I backed the fast idle screw WAY off and also advanced the choke a little too much, so I'll fix that. But still, on first startup you can see the black smoke coming out of the exhaust. AND this was filmed on a 29 degree (Fahrenheit) morning in Anchorage, Alaska. What am I doing wrong? The carburetor is tuned just fine for warm/normal operation, it idles nicely and doesn't stumble or stutter anywhere during normal or aggressive driving. Thoughts?
Where is the positive lead for the choke hooked up??? You need a keyed to the ignition on 12 volt source...
From the video, it looks like you have it hooked up to the coil ---> That's a no-no - the coil positive has only 6 volts....
Hook it up to the ballast resistor input side... To find the input side of the ballast, disconnect the wires from both sides of the ballast resistor, then take a test light with the clamp end hooked to the battery negative, then probe each of the ballast resistor wires that you disconnected for power with the key in the on position... Whichever wire makes the test light go on, is the input positive side of the ballast, that is what you want to hook up to... I use a flat blade piggyback terminal and stack the two, but you can just wire them together if you wish...
After you get the proper connections for the choke, then you will need to reset the fast idle choke screw and put the electric choke to the center of the adjustment and go from there... A good way to get a ball park for the adjustment of the pod, is to get the engine warmed up and rotate the pod until the top plate for the choke is just fully open... Then try a few more cold starts and see where you are at and adjust from there...
