just wondering if theres somethign I can do to make my 351M less cold natured. I have a manual choke, right now its all I can afford. would a block heater help? just wondering.

 

It certainly doesn't hurt, actually it helps quite a bit, it can hit -40 below here in the winter, i use a block heater on both my diesel and gas engines.

 

A block heater will help but it's a band-aid fix for what's really going on. The choke takes care of enrichening the fuel mixture at cold start, but manual choke or not you should have a fast idle linkage that raises the idle when the choke is closed. I'm willing to bet this is your problem.

 

Ditto on a block heater helping, and may even be needed for extreme cold, but an otherwise properly tuned carb will work fine down to pretty dang cold even without a block heater. I just got back from the store and when I left the house it was 2F degrees outside and my 460 fired up just as quick as a new truck and had no issue whatsoever. It is an electric chocke, but a manual chocke works the some, only with you having to decide how much and how long to use it. All the little things like timing, jetting, etc become even more important when you are dealing with extremes.

Go ahead and put an engine heater on it, but still work on getting things dialed in just right as well. If you need help dialing it in, well that's what we are here for.

George