[Tommy]

Jurgen,
Most carbureted engines have too high an air to fuel ratio on a cold start to run well (or at all). Back when most cars had carburetors, they had chokes to temporarily limit the amount of air to the engine on a cold start. Manual chokes had a control in the cabin that allowed the driver to close a flap on top of the carburetor. Automatic chokes did much the same thing, but the engine had to be cold and the driver had to "set the choke" by pressing the gas pedal fully to the floor one time before starting. (That's one reason some of us old guys still instinctively want to pump the gas pedal on our modern EFI cars).

If you don't know what you have, remove the air cleaner and look in the top of your cold engine. Manually move the throttle to full open and release it. You should see a squirt of gas going down the barrels of the carburetor. If you see a flap close off most of the air to the carburetor, you have an automatic choke. If you have both a squirt of gas and a functioning automatic choke, then it is possible the choke is not properly adjusted (i.e, it's shutting off too much air or not enough). If you don't have an automatic choke (like many of us Cobra guys), just pump the gas a few extra times before a cold start to increase the fuel in the air to fuel mixture. If your engine is like mine, you may have to pump it a few more times to keep it running until it warms up enough to like the fuel mixture.

One more thing. If you do have an automatic choke, you disengage it much the same way you engaged it. When you sense the warmed engine is starting to idle too fast, blip the throttle and the choke will disengage.