<VV> FC van choke and Greenbrier weatherstrips.

[Hugo Miller]

I understand all that perfectly, so there is no need to keep repeating 
it. And whilst it's very kind of you to 'point me in the direction of 
the shop manual' I already know know how to read a workshop maual, but 
it doesn't show what I need to know. If it did, I wouldn't be posting 
queries on here!
But there still some things that don't quite add up. I do not have a 
"plate held on by two screws" on the firewall. The pic in the manual 
seems to show a plate held on by FOUR screws, but on closer inspection 
the bottom two may not be screws. It's impossible to see what they are. 
I do have two screws in the firewall, but no marks anywhere indicating 
the presence of a bracket in the past. It is not impossible that there 
was one there at some point though. If so, that invites the question of 
why anybody would remove the entire choke operating mechanism when it 
has manual choke carbs (of which I have four - two spares came with the 
vehicle).
The bigger puzzle is what has happened at the front end. There is one 
question that only GM can answer - why on Earth would they print the 
word 'CHOKE' on the dash and not have a hole underneath it for the 
choke, necessitating having to fit a seperate panel to accommodate the 
choke cable. That's very odd, to put it mildly.
What I am missing is any holes under the dash to accommodate a choke 
cable bracket. Surprisingly, the manual contains no pictures anywhere of 
the dash layout. But I did find an oblique picture in a different 
section that does appear to show such a bracket to the left of the 
steering wheel. I have the wiper & washer switches mounted there, 
clearly off a Spyder. So that presumably is where the holes went! I'm 
sure somebody said they were on the right?
The long and the short of all this is that you cannot have a manual 
choke with a Spyder dash. Yet that is exactly what I have! Maybe that's 
why the previous owner gave up, when he realised what a pickle he had 
got himself into! I do have the original dash, but it's a bit scruffy. I 
have found a nicer one on good old eBay & I plan to use the Spyder dash 
on one of my cars.
But at the end of the day it's still going to be easier for me to swap 
carbs than construct a choke mechanism from scratch. In the meantime, I 
just use a squirt of brake cleaner down the air intakes to get it going 
from cold, then it will run happily without a choke, which is just as 
well in the circumstances.

On 2019-11-05 18:17, Jim Becker wrote:
> Your "plate held on by two screws" sounds like part of the choke
> control mechanism.  I pointed you to the picture in the shop manual 
> so
> you might recognize the parts or at least the location where they 
> were
> mounted.
>
> In '61, the throttle cable originally came in at the side of the
> transmission.  Later models ran it through the firewall to pull
> directly on the cross shaft.  As the earlier style parts were
> discontinued, GM supplied a kit to convert the early vehicles.  That
> may be what is on yours.  Or maybe somebody pieced the equivalent
> together.
>
> The " 'add-on' panel" is part of the Spyder dash.  As I recall, it
> originally held the wiper/washer switch and the cigarette lighter.
> With all the additional gauges, there was no room for those items in
> the main panel.
>
> The original '61 panels had the word "CHOKE" but DID NOT HAVE ANY
> OTHER HOLES FOR MOUNTING THE CHOKE CABLE.  The cable mounted below 
> the
> dash.  I don't know how else to explain it.  Maybe somebody else can
> come up with different words but I have run out.  Please read this
> paragraph a second time, then a third.  If you still don't 
> understand,
> have somebody read it to you.  This is the third time I have told you
> this and the second time I have told you to reread what I already
> said.
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Hugo Miller
> Sent: Monday, November 04, 2019 11:29 AM
> To: Jim Becker
> Cc: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Subject: Re:  FC van choke and Greenbrier weatherstrips.
>
> I just put a second pair of specs on and stared at it a bit harder. 
> In
> my book it shows a bracket in the front firewall for the choke 
> cables.
> This has four bolts or screws. At least I thought it did, but with a
> second pair of specs on it might just have two bolts at the top. The
> things at the bottom that look like bolts may not be bolts. On MY
> firewall, I have a plate held on by two screws in about the right 
> place.
> It has a hole, through which goes a thin little pipe which looks like 
> a
> vacuum pipe. Also my throttle cable goes through a hole way up high 
> in
> the firewall, not underneath it like the book shows.
> At the front of the car there are no holes in the dash, under it or
> anywhere near it. It does have an 'add-on' panel under the dash to 
> the
> left of the steering column. This contains the wiper switch and what 
> I
> presume is a washer switch, although I have no washers.
> The intriguing part is that my ORIGINAL dash (not the Spyder dash 
> that
> is fitted) has the word 'CHOKE' engraved in a line with the other
> markings. But there is no hole or anything underneath the word CHOKE. 
> If
> it weren't so damn wet out there (this is England!) I would crawl
> underneath and see if there is any evidence of any choke fittings.
> Other than that, your last suggestion might be the most plausible!
> Except that the door handles tally with the early type, and it has a
> gear shifter that is bent like a stick of liquorice and goes back
> horizontally through a vertical panel in the cab. I believe this is 
> the
> early type & the later ones went down through the floor? Who knows 
> what
> has happened over the past sixty years!
>
>
> On 2019-11-04 17:43, Jim Becker wrote:
>> OK, I should have said the word "CHOKE" was below the speedometer
>> rather than at the bottom edge of the instrument panel.  The choke
>> would still have been screwed to the bottom directly below it.  
>> There
>> should still be 2 screw holes there.
>>
>> THESE HOLES WILL NOT BE IN THE INSTRUMENT PANEL.  THEY ARE IN THE
>> BODY, IN THE SAME PORTION THAT THE PANEL IS SCREWED TO.
>>
>> I am not aware of any Corvairs built in '61 without manual chokes.
>> Either the two screw holes are below the instrument panel along with
>> about three in the firewall, or somebody went to the trouble to fill
>> them, or somebody jacked up the serial number plate and slid a
>> different year body under it.
>> __________________________