Smooth Starting

Anybody know what that little curly thing is?

It's a "Choke Thermostat Spring", and that one is broken.

When the weather turned cold, the slow-starting truck turned into a no-starting truck. At any temperature under 20, I had to spray starting fluid into the carb just to get the engine to fire up. As you might guess, in Northern Vermont, the temperature stays below 20 a whole lot during Winter. I've been through two bottles of starting fluid in a month and a half. 

A little investigative sleuthing found two problems: the choke linkage was incorrectly assembled, and the choke spring was broken. The linkage was a free fix. The spring - which was used on just about every vehicle for decades - was only a few dollars, but took a week to arrive at the parts store. No doubt that such a rare part had to be special ordered in from Outer Mongolia....

Now, the truck fires up with just three taps on the gas pedal and a twist of the key. No starting fluid needed, in any weather. (Except that -22 morning. That took a whole lot of cranking...)

I like the cheap fixes.....