You can recognize a vintage car when it has a choke knob. Pull it out, start the car, and wait a few minutes before pushing in.
Cars and trucks switched to automatic choke in the late 50’s? VW still had manual choke for a few more years (early 60’s).
I learned to drive in my uncle’s beat up 57 truck with a manual choke and clutch.
Why did it take so long for cars and trucks to get automatic choke?
Also, remember having to pump the gas pedal one time before starting?
I haven’t needed to do that since driving cars from the late 1960’s.
I’m not sure what changed.
Isn’t that an issue of carburetors vs fuel injection? I did this in the 1980’s, not because it was absolutely necessary, but because it helped the car start more easily.
I think so. I’d forgotten about the transition from carburetors to fuel injection.
I cannot knowledgeably answer the question. But my guess would be that manual chokes were a very simple and inexpensive item. Knob, wire, that’s it. Not much to break and lightweight too.
Now I get to add that for reasons beyond me a lot of drivers who grew up with manual chokes prefer them. Perhaps because they perceive better starting control. I did not grow up using manual chokes so I’ll take automatics, thank you Detroit.
And for the most part, the “automatic” chokes didn’t work very well. The mechanism used a bimetallic spiral spring for temperature compensation, and became unreliable after a few years.
Thank goodness for fuel injection. 
There was a manual choke in my 1977 Civic.
I know multiple people who still do that. My mom, for example, was still doing it on (new) cars 20 years ago. Mostly out of habit, but also because she didn’t know you didn’t have to.
Someone I work with, every time he starts a vehicle (or the forklift), you can hear the engine rev way up because he’s pumping the gas.
I have a few ICE tools that still use a manual choke, chainsaws and a power wagon, for example. They work well and start right up after sitting for months. If a car was sold that was significantly cheaper, but had a manual choke, I’d consider it.
I actually retrofitted a car with a manual choke because the automatic unit appeared to be demon-possessed. I did everything I could think of — replaced the bimetallic spring, doused it with carb cleaner, adjusted it every which way — and it still wouldn’t close. Which in Montana, in winter, just wasn’t gonna cut it.
When I was a teen we had a truck that you had to pour gas down the carb to get it to start in the morning. We kept an old oil quart with some gas in it handy, unscrew the air filter and poor the gas down the screw hole.
I would have been hard to incorporate in British cars with SU or Solex constant velocity carbs. In those cars pulling the “choke” knob lowered the fuel jet under the carb to allow more fuel.
Dennis
There was a manual choke in my 1986 Honda Civic. I don’t know when Honda stopped using them, but they worked well.
No; I had a lot of carbed stuff without chokes; still do on motorcycles. I never understood automatic chokes and found/find a lot of them garbage. Synchromesh on the other hand -----------
But I still do keep up on double-clutching – just in case.
If your 86 civic had a manual choke, it’s because someone rigged something up or it had an aftermarket carb on it. The civics from that era had a variety of fuel system setups (3 barrel and F.I. for sure, and I believe 2 barrels as well - none with manual chokes though. It seems like Honda had all the manual chokes fazed out by the late 70’s, maybe early 80’s)
Manual chokes do work well though.
Most likely had a bad accelerator pump in the carb (that’s what squirts fuel into the venturi when you work the throttle linkage). Could have also had carbon build up on the intake valves, vacuum leaks and such that you were having to compensate for.
I’d guess that it makes the car a little harder to steal, or to be borrowed by goofy relatives.
That’s what manual transmissions are for. Works like a charm
Not among my friends and family. While almost everyone but me owns an automatic everyone freaking one knows how to work three pedals when they have to. :smack:
What exactly does the choke do?
Here’s why I ask: Modern general aviation airplanes to this day (as far as I know) still have a manual control called “Mixture” which adjusts the ratio of air to fuel being fed into the engine. Also, as far as I know, this is still true with modern airplanes with fuel-injection instead of carburetors. (Pilots or airplane mechanics: Is any of the above still true?)
But I remarked to one pilot (a young guy who has probably never seen a car with a manual choke) that cars used to have a manual choke but all are automatic now, so why don’t airplanes have automatic mixture control now?
He answered that the mixture control doesn’t do quite the same thing as a choke in cars (without further explanation).
So, question for pilots or airplane mechanics: What exactly did a choke do, and how is that different from the mixture control in modern airplanes? (Am I totally wrong about what I think a choke does?)