Paging Huw, or anyone else into shite old Diesels...

Oh, there was - if you had manual choke, chances are you only had one box out of two - if you had automatic choke, it was IIRC, electronically controlled, and also used by the ECU to richen the mixture slightly when the car was floored, hence when it was working properly, they ran quite lean and were economical for their class, but when it all went a bit Pete Tong your tickover went to s*it, as did your economy.

All from distant memory, mind, so some of the above may be 'rowlocks'... but they definitely had an ECU controlled set up, on the carb... unless you had a van or some City models, if fitted as standard with a manual choke.

Always the way!

-- JackH

Mine was an 'L', ie mid range (plastic bumpers). Manual choke, but still quite economical anyway. I wonder if they went manual for the later cars (mine was an '87)? I do remember the 1.6 having an ECU.

cheers, clive

I took a carb off a 1.3 Maestro last year to fit something else entirely (although that fell through in the end, and last week I was glad, when I had to rob the needle valve out of it). No leccy bits whatsoever, just a good old SU on a rather crap looking manifold. I don't know if the very last ones had anything changed or not though.

The electronic ignition is basically just a hall effect sensor in place of points, and a known mod for pretty much any Lucas based old car. I haven't had much experience of it yet though, first one I've had is on the Metro, which I've done all of about 50 miles in so far. I still think it's possibly a bit dodgy, but unlike proper points and condensor, it's not a 10 second job to check from what I can tell.

That must have been a hard decision. Bet you were tearing your hair out for days over that one!