'64 Hard Cold Starting

[sseebart]

I bought a '64 Hardtop a few months ago. It's been a while since I've worked on a V-8 with a carburetor. Ok, a long while. So it may be that I'm missing something simple here.

My 390 has about 25k since it was rebuilt by the previous owner, some 15 years ago. The original carb was replaced with an Edelbrock performer. The car had been sitting for some time before I bought it, so I siphoned out all the fuel I could, replaced it with fresh and rebuilt the carb.

When I try to stat it cold, generally after sitting overnight, it cranks a long while and sometimes starts, sometimes doesn't. 2-3 shots of starting fluid in the throttle body, and it will start right up, running rough for a minute or two, then smoothing out. Once warm, it will start on the first crank.

The carb has an electric choke that appears to be closing properly--it's open just a crack after I push the pedal to the floor. I'm guessing this is a fuel issue, since the starting fluid does the trick. I've seen elsewhere that this problem could be caused by fuel leaking into the manifold, but no idea where to start looking for a leak.

 

[sseebart]

Cold Start Issue: Fixed?

I took a look at the Edelbrock manual and poked around under the hood a bit. Found two issues on the carb: the choke cap was loose and the fast idle screw was backed completely off. I set the choke cap to the neutal, middle, position and tightened it, then screwed in the fast idle a few turns.

It fired right up. Nice.

Two non-issues: I saw no fuel leak into the manifold and there was 12 volts to the electric choke