[bigchillcar]

very useful if it is indeed a hand throttle..i prefer them to the later-styled aar. if you remove the rubber grommet and carpet, you might find that it's simply out of adjustment..which could explain why it seems to do nothing. the hand throttle is not a 'choke', but literally a link to the accelerator cable that runs from the engine to the foot pedal. there should be a piece of plastic that attaches the hand throttle directly to the cable so that when you 'pull up' on the cable it translates to a 'pressing down' of the foot pedal..if you watch you can see it move the pedal..that's all it does..it holds a little throttle as if you are 'giving it a little gas' to allow warmup idle speed. adjusted correctly, in the 'full up' position, it should permit an idle speed of ~ 2500-3500 rpms. there is a small screw near the piece of plastic i've described that simply moves the position of the hand throttle to where it ties into the cable to adjust rpm's based upon lever position. pretty simple engineering..take a look and you'll see..it becomes clearer then..
ryan