When it is cold, I'm having trouble starting my wife's S40 without flooding it.  Seems no matter whether I use choke or not, or whether I give it gas or not, it floods.  Now, it will eventually start and when it does, it idles/runs perfectly.  I don't think I have found the right combination of choke/gas to get it started fairly easily.  Suggestions?

I have never had trouble with my Savage - but I had a similar problem with my 4 stroke trilals bike when I first got it.  It turned out that the idle was set too low, and the engine would not get enough air to start and using the choke only made it worse.  The problem went away when I turned the idle speed screw in and opened the slide up a bit more.

Have you ever checked our idles speed to make sure it is up around 1,100 rpm?  If you don't have a tach you can check the speed by idlling the engine along on level ground in 1st gear....you should be going around 8-9 mph.

Have you tried just the first notch on the choke? Have ya tried starting to spin it over, pull the choke & push it back in?