Short Wave Sportfishing wrote in message . ..

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 02:36:53 GMT, Jim Kelly wrote:

If this were true, there would be no need for a choke
on a carbed engine.

Huh?

What does choking an engine (limiting the air in the fuel mixture for
a quicker start) have to do with hot plugs?

I think he was responding to:

You
have to remember that the reason you have a thermostat is to maintain
a constant temperature on the block for expansion/contraction reasons
- not for combustion. Combustion is strictly the pervue of how hot
the spark is.

Gasoline will ignite only within a range of mixtures with air. While
the block is cold, fuel in the mixture condenses on the cold surfaces
so there is not enough fuel in vapor phase to be ignited by spark.
Thus, the choke is closed to introduce more fuel to get the mixture
right, till the engine "warms up."

So we see that one function of the thermostat is to keep the block
warm enough to eliminate fuel condensation, for purposes of
combustion. And we see that combustion is the pervue of not only how
hot the spark is, but also air/fuel mixture.

%mod%