Grey cold weather tuning

[EJ_Dave]

I would appreciate the collective wisdom of this most excellent (and highly addictive) forum on how to get grey motors (specifically mine) to run well in the cold.

I live in Canberra and drive my grey powered EJ to work every day (about 10ks) and at the moment it is only running well for about the last 2 blocks. Always starts first go and for the first couple of minutes runs fine. Then it runs OK until I need to stop and let it idle. For any given choke position it will idle smoothly for about 10-20 seconds and then slowly start to die. Pulling the choke out further stops this but then it idles rough as guts and sounds like it is only running on five (or maybe 4 or 3) cylinders. It does this until I am on the move again when I push in the choke and it runs fine.

I have checked the obvious things such as plugs, points and timing, the carby was reconditioned about 2 years ago and I think the dizzy is OK (no sloppiness). I am running an 82 degree thermostat and the standard (pretty hot) spark plugs.

I am wondering if the problem is due (at least partly) to me running extractors which don't warm the inlet manifold like the old exhaust manifold did causing the fuel to not vaporising as well. A warm manifold must be reasonably important if Holden engineered a water jacket into the red motor.

Any ideas on what the problem might be- it is driving me mad and a short drive it is!

I am thinking of engineering a warm air intake (see modification help section) if this is likely to help.

Cheers,

David

[EJ_Dave]

I forgot to mention that I checked the idle mixture and upped the idle speed too!

David

[Gertie]

I have been through the same problem about 30 years ago with a stock grey in my FC. I have no doubt that the problem is the lack of inlet manifold heating.

However all is not lost, I recall that at the time  I tested a Capacitor Discharge Ignition on the old grey & one of the advantages was the ability to push the choke in almost immediately after starting on a cold morning.

I explained this to a mate & he said I could have done the same thing by fixing the inlet manifold heater flap. He was correct, I've never had the problem again & I always check the heater flap & lube if necesary.

I removed the CDI as well.

The moral of the story is try an electronic ignition or CDI system to get a stronger spark, it may be easier than adding a heating device to your inlet manifold.