I have a 73 Newport that has a hard time starting when cold. It takes 20 or 30 pumps of the gas before I can hear fuel coming from the jets. I thought it might be the fuel pump, but the problem remains after I replaced it. The car starts up right away when it is warm. Is this a carb issue? Or is there something I'm missing? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

I had the same problem with my car, and I believe it is because of the lower flash point of modern gas. The 4 bowl vents of the 4 bbl carb on my car's 383 let the engine heat evaporate all the gas out overnight. You can definitely smell it, and a long crank is required to pump it full again, especially if the tank is under half full. A new fuel pump didn't help me either.
I have sold my car, but I think an electric FP would have solved it. I simply primed the carb manually after it had been dormant a couple days.
Also, the car ran much better on no-ethanol (marine) gas. Doesn't help the evaporation, but it's better behaved otherwise.

 

Thank you for sharing that. Other things I read online indicated the same thing, but I wanted to see what people on the forum experienced. Based on how the car runs once it starts, it probably is the gas evaporating. Not much we can do about that I guess, huh?

 

I finally went EFI. Before that the most effective strategy I found was

rear mount electric pump
carb heat isolator
depending on location, block cross over
build yourself a vapor return system using wix 33040 or 33041 filter

 

bad accelerator pump

 

one thing i found is let the fuel set for 10-20 seconds before cranking.

 

Do you park on a hill ? Just get a small electric pump to supplement the mechanical one... A small airtex or ?? should be cheap. Wire in a relay & switch to operate it.. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Electric-Fue...5af50c&vxp=mtr

 

73 -

I know this is an old post, but is it possible that your choke isn't functioning properly? If the choke isn't closing adequately, you'll have problems with a cold start, and be fine with a warm start.

Archer