I have a 1980 and choke is not working. Can anyone tell me what to check for so I can get it working?

 

Your '80 has an electric choke im guessing. I recall the choke is closed when eng is cold and u should see a closed flap over the primary venturies hiding them. Once the ignition is turned on an element heats up and that blade over the primaries starts to open. Once open its held open by the heated element.

So what im saying is all u have to do to test your choke is take a piece of wire long enough to reach from the hot junction on the fender well (where a bunch of red wires connect into) and connect it to the choke electrical connector blade (pull off the wire connector). U should witness the choke blade open above the primaries and stay open (the air cleaner is off of course).

Thats the best i can do w/o being there.
Good luck and let us know what u find.

 

Is the choke staying closed or staying open?

cardo0's description of the behavior above is correct, although for the choke to fully close when cold you'd likely need to tap the throttle (assuming it was open the last time you shut the motor off).

 

It stays open all the time.

 

More than likely the linkage from the heating element to the blade is broken or the blade is somehow stuck.

 

Is this something that suddenly happened, or are you working on an issue that has always been like this..? If it's always been like this since you've owned the car, the previous owner may have intentionally jammed the choke wide open due to other issues, in which case the troubleshooting will be different from a problem that just suddenly happened.

Lars

 

The choke system is *fairly* simple. The black cover on the choke housing has a metal box or tang that is supposed to grab between two tangs on the arm inside the choke housing.

The body of that arm grabs onto a link inside a well on the main body of the carburetor. This link has another hole that a rod attaches to.

This rod than travels vertically to a second link attached to the shaft that the choke flap rides on.

With the air cleaner off, move the choke flap with your hand and verify backwards from there.

For this list, if "yes", continue, otherwise fix the problem and try again:
1. Is the upper link there, and does it move with the flap?
1a. If not, the upper link is slotted to fit onto the choke shaft perfectly and retained by a screw. This will need to be fixed.
2. Is the rod attached, allowing it to move with the upper link?
2a. Remove the link and attach the rod, however, if the rod is not attached it is best to try step 3 manually with the rod first.
3. Do the links between the choke housing and choke rod move with the choke flap?
3a. This indicates that the lower part of the rod is attached to the lower choke link AND the lower choke link is attached to the choke's main shaft.

Do you feel spring pressure when doing this? Or an you freely move the choke back and forth in either direction with minimal to no resistance?
If you feel spring pressure in the closing direction, the choke has been adjusted wide open and needs to be adjusted back to seat properly when the fast idle cam is on the second step of its tang (Lars has a great description on this in his Q-Jet tuning paper).

If you feel no spring pressure but everything is attached and moving correctly, the arm on the choke cap has slipped out of or broken off so that it is no longer connected to the choke mainshaft (or was never set correctly in the first place).

If you feel intermittement spring pressure, it is likely that the choke cap was not correctly set onto the choke mainshaft's arm.

Hope this helps!

If it gets really confusing, I can take pictures or video for you on my working carb so you can see how it all works together.

 

I was going to work on this today but I had something come up.
I will work on it one day after work this week.thank you for all the great information and I will get back with you and let you know things go.