Choke spring heaters on a six-pack set up
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 12:45 am
Anybody messed with choke spring heaters on a six-pack set up? The Edelbrock heads I used on my project don't have passages for heat crossover to the intake manifold creating a situation of insufficient heat at the choke well (choke never comes off completely). Even with passages through the heads the fact that I'm running headers and not the factory exhaust manifolds with a heat riser flap would create a colder than factory intake. Only way to have a functional automatic choke and have it come off completely is to heat it electrically. The '74 motor, I picked up while back for its block, had a heated divorced choke set up for the Thermoquad(sp). I mated this heater with the holley choke and installed a choke heater timer/control unit from a late '70s Chrysler. The timer/control basically provides the 1.6 amps of current the heater pulls for about 10 minutes on a cold motor and then dropping down to about .5 amps necessary to keep the choke completely open through warm running.
Update 2/6/2009, since I originally posted this last year I went through two different NOS choke heater controls. Both appeared to have failed due to burned internal contacts. I recall when I worked on these cars back in the day; they didn't last long when the cars were new. I built my own control based on a Bosch relay and a solid state timer circuit. It is holding up much better as of now quite well.
Update 2/6/2009, since I originally posted this last year I went through two different NOS choke heater controls. Both appeared to have failed due to burned internal contacts. I recall when I worked on these cars back in the day; they didn't last long when the cars were new. I built my own control based on a Bosch relay and a solid state timer circuit. It is holding up much better as of now quite well.