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Reply to "Starting a "cold" Speedster"

Yeah, it's OK. There's some relearning things that you forgot, and a few more things that are unique to dual carbs on a flat 4.

I strongly suspect your fuel bowls are drying up when the car sits. This is pretty common with Dellortos and Webers. It's a super-good reason to have an electric fuel pump. If you don't, you need to crank and crank to fill the bowls with the mechanical pump. If you don't have an electric pump, I'd get one. There are other good reasons to do it, but this one keeps you from needing to crank the car for 15 seconds to fill the bowls.

If you do already have an electric pump, the cold-start process is as follows:

Turn on the switch. Wait 10 or 15 seconds until the pump tone changes (you can hear it), indicating the bowls are filled. Pump the accelerator while cranking - it'll take several pumps to squirt fuel down the throats. The engine should catch and start.

Once it does, you'll likely need to "clear out" the fuel you just shot down the throats, so I blip the throttle two or three times, before allowing the accelerator to "snap" back - I don't try to ease the throttle back to idle, I allow the return springs to close the butterflies with their pull force (a spring doesn't have as much force when it's nearly returned).

It'll probably barely idle, and maybe not at all. If not, blip the throttle a few times, allowing it to return to idle until it will stay running. If you are timed and jetted right, it'll probably idle at just over 750 RPM when cold and closer to 1100 or so when warm. You can dial it down further, but it may not stay running when cold if you do.

Every engine behaves differently. Webers and Dells don't have chokes - it doesn't take very long at all for the intake manifolds on a dual carb setup to warm up, as they are sitting right on the heads.

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