Good evening,

I put a new (rebuilt) electronic choke carb on a 1979 Ford F100, 302 motor.

Most of the time, the damn choke buttlerfly stays shut and I have to actually manually open the buttlerfly so the truck will run. If I don't truck runs terrible and barely run at all and sucks gas. The engine itself is warmed up. The colder it is outside the worse it is. On a warm day, the carb seems to open up okay without manual intevention. Other than that truck runs ok.

I have had soooo many people check different things, the choke adjustment, the voltage going to the electronic choke wire, and still keeps messing up. It seems to do better when leaned out. Could it be carb is defected, even tho rebuilt? The carb is a "motorcraft" from autozone. Its a real pain in the %$$^^%.

What about just putting a "manual choke" carb on it? Can you get those for that year?

Also, is it ok to run a carb alittle lean vs. rich? How does that affect fuel milage.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Super,
I believe that is the stock two-barrel you are talking about. Mine has a thermal wand that connects from the choke housing to the exhaust manifold. It's very common for these to rust off. If that is missing, you may have a vacuum leak that is sucking cold air through the choke assembly and preventing it from closing. Does anyone else know more about this?
KingFisher
PS I just put a cap on the end of mine to stop the leak. My choke doesn't work at all.

 

warmed up. when I open the hood, the butterfly is shut tight. but what is wierd is it does this some of time , not all of the time. its just such a pain to be start out driving for the day and have to take the breather off and open the buttlerfly. after i manually open the butterfly, the truck runs fine. i thinking about getting a manual choke so i dont have to deal with it anymore.

 

Check your choke pull-off, it's the vacuum operated thing that should yank the choke plate open a little right after it starts.

I've heard they had a manual choke conversion for those original motorcraft 2-barrel carbs but I don't know anything more about that. I had a motorcraft 2150 on my 351M and I finally gave up on it and replaced it with a new Holley 2300 with a manual choke. Works much better now.