<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Johnny:
I had mine plugged, but was told not to do that, because when choking the carbs you have to be able to have a drain for the excess fuel.
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I think that manifold drains were a hold over from old tractor designs. The Healey drains are so small that it would take quite a few minutes to drain any serious amount of fuel. I see no particular reason why excess fuel wouldn't just continue flowing down the intake port & into the engine instead of stopping to go down the drain anyway. Zillions of cars have been made without manifold drains & don't seem to have problems. Even the Tri Carb Healeys don't have drains.
If enough fuel drained into a cylinder, more than the combustion chamber volume, there would be a possibility of hydraulic lock & bending a connecting rod. I think that the number of times that this has happened are few indeed.
There are some aviation engine applications that had manifold drains but they were tubes which were large enough to do the job & had ball check valves for one way flow. One of the perpetual problems with them was that the check valves didn't always seal, caused vacuum leaks & poor low rpm running.
Personal preference I think, but can hardly be justified on technical merit.
D