Choke position in carb mouth

[groily]

What's needed is a comprehensive guide to owning and riding old British bikes.
  . . .
I have found it useful on a long fast trip recently where the A10 was running was running lean at Motorway speeds so was able to partially close the choke and get it running properly.

Fair points! But Owners' Manuals are pretty much all out there for most marques, and they do talk about starting procedures for the most part.

And yup, an air slide's a useful aid  in the event of a weak spot, I do agree - but that's not really their raison d'être  . . .

I tend to retain the combination 'bar levers, if they're there, but am quite happy do without the 'contraptions' on the other end.

Mind you, doesn't get as cold where I am as it does in rural Scotland. It is not snowing here. But it has been cold all the same - froze my butt off as Richard L would probably say for 250km in cold and wet yesterday with a 7am start  . . . needed a slug of mulled wine to cure that on my return, and then was up on barn roof replacing a few tiles that had gone awol. So more mulled needed. All in all, a good day then.

[Greybeard]

Then again, if we wanted modern-bike simplicity we'd all just ride one of those nice Honda's and be done with it.

Or a nice new fuel injected BSA Gold Star 

[mikeb]

its said that all things make sense when you understand their history, apparently even Amals as TT and Bill describe. So too Catz and my assumptions about how chokes (not air slides) operate.

Owners' Manuals are pretty much all out there for most marques...

says Bill and strangely soon after buying my a10 I actually searched out the manual to make sense of this and other quirks of ancient design. I can't recall ever reading a bike manual before. Maybe they should come with the bike    ?

[Colsbeeza]

I still have the choke fitted, and the lever is mounted on the frame just under the front of the seat on right hand side, mainly because I want the bike to look as original as I can. The lever holds in the up position quite well, but can be easily bumped, so I've got used to checking it after starting.
I am very wary of chokes. I purchased a 600cc Matchless G11 back in my ill-spent youth, and after 3 weeks of constant stalling, smoke etc I was ready to get rid of it for a song, when I discovered that it had a choke, and you guessed it - it was almost full on .
Col

[orabanda]

Got to watch those chokes!!
True story told by my best friend Robert, who was a mechanic at the Holden dealer in Kalgoorlie at the time.
Little Old Lady constantly complained about the HR Holden Special she putted around town in.
Said it didn't run well; several trips back to the dealer and they couldn't find anything wrong.
On this occasion Robert did a thorough tune-up and was happy with the test drive.
When "LOL" came in, Neville the service manager told her they couldn't find any fault with the car.
However, he requested she took it for a drive with him on board.
She agreed to do this, pulled out the knob for the cable operated choke, hung her handbag off it, and started the engine!

[Rex]

Blimey, last time I heard that one the old girl was driving a Morris Traveller!

[Jules]

never ever used a choke, because it never had one when I bought the bike (A7) back in the 60's, living in Essex cold, wet, snow, etc etc just tickled until flooded and kicked it over, let it warm up for a few minutes, never had a problem......