Ah the joys of manual chokes!
On cold frosty mornings...
1. Judge the outside temperature and amount of frost on the car, pull the choke out by a carefully learned amount.
2. Operate the starter and hope that the engine starts.
3. If the engine doesn't start quickly...
4. Smell petrol and realize that you've flooded the engine.
5. Push the choke back in, gently apply full throttle to avoid the accelerator pump pushing in yet more petrol.
6. Operate the starter to blow out the excess petrol whilst still failing to start.
7. Goto 1.
8. Repeat the cycle until either the engine starts or the battery goes flat.
Assuming that the above is successful, and you're not catching the bus...
9. Adjust the choke to set the engine to fast idle.
10. Pull out onto a busy road, picking your gap, and simultaneously attempt to accelerate while yanking the choke out to it's full extent to prevent the engine from dying and causing a collision.
11. Carefully modify the above procedure whilst the engine warms up in stop-start traffic.
12. Once the engine has warmed up, forget that you've left the choke out! Stop at traffic lights and wonder why the engine has died and there's a strong smell of petrol.
13. Slowly apply full throttle whilst restarting.
14. Look mournfully at the fuel gauge.
That's how it worked on my old wrecks anyway.
est
Remember when automatic thermostatic chokes came it? They were worse!
I never worked out why Brit cars were so hard to start in the morning.
I can understand in the UK, because it gets a bit colder than most of Oz , but even in a Perth WA Winter, there was a profound difference.
In mid-winter, I would go out to my EH Holden, scrape the ice off the windscreen, kick the pedal so the accellerator pump squirted some raw juice into the carby, turn the key, & it started!
"Pommy" cars I had in the same period would have to go through the routine you described----admittedly, they were older than the Holden, but even making allowances for that, the difference was stark.
When I went to the UK for a year in 1971/72, we had a 100E Ford Popular, which hated starting, & many cold mornings we walked to work, instead!
At Christmas time '71, I went to Scotland, where, in the other Perth, I rented a car from the local VW dealer.
Unfortunately, he was out of VWs, but had a Ford Cortina Estate, which was a few years old.
Well, it was a pig!
Hated starting---I can't remember if it had a manual or auto choke, but the stink of unburnt fuel surrounded it after each start.
The final straw was when it "died" just as I was entering a dual carriageway with quite a lot of traffic, then did its starting "party trick".
I took it back, & demanded something else----this time they did have a VW, but it looked like somebody had been using it in a rally--- covered with mud, scruffy inside, generally "not up to their normal standards".
They wanted to "detail" it first, but I insisted, drove the muddy thing down the road to the carwash,so I could actually see with the headlights, then continued on my trip, driving all around the North of Scotland.
The VW started impeccably every morning, the heater worked spectacularly well (another failing of the Ford), & left me with a very good impression.