1988 Honda Accord Idle Problems

i gotta 88’ accord with 190,000 miles on it, and i have a prob when i
idle...the car starts just fine and it idles nicely at about 2000 rpm.
the problem starts when i slow down,stop or when the rpms drop below
1500 the car will stutter and shut off. im not sure what the problem
is..im not sure if this is something that i can fix myself. any help
would be appreciated.

danny

 

danny,
Try adjusting the timing. If that does not solve the problem, take the car
to your favorite mechanic and have him hook it up to his Diagostic
Computerized Engine Tester. The mechanic should easily be able to
determine the source of the problem and repair the problem. I should note
that a car that has 190,000 miles starts having all sorts of problems
since most of the parts are now worn out and will stop working very soon.
Jason

 

Is this car fuel injected or carbureted?

Eric

 

carbuerated....or however you spell it...

 

It might be a vacuum leak. One of the most common causes is a bad
carburetor base gasket. This is a heavy rubberized plate which likes to
warp and cause a vacuum leak which can interfere with the engine idling.
There are a couple of ways to check for a lean running condition. You could
do a propane enrichment test where you slowly feed propane into the
carburetor barrel. You can use a standard propane torch but remove the
flame tip and attach a length of tubing. The standard propane boost is
about 125 rpm. Any more than that and you've got a lean condition. To
narrow it down to the base gasket, try spraying some carburetor cleaner
around the base of the carburetor where it bolts up to the manifold. Make
sure you do this with the air cleaner on to avoid false positives. If the
base gasket is leaking, then the carb cleaner should boost the idle and the
base gasket will need to be replaced. This of course requires removing the
carburetor which can be tricky if you've never done it before.

Your problem could also be due to a plugged idle circuit in the carburetor.
Fixing this requires overhauling the carburetor. I have no clue what your
technical abilities are, but for the record, Honda sells what's known as a
top clean kit which comes with everything you need except for floats. It
also comes with a thorough set of instructions. The top clean kit was
developed by a Honda tech many years ago to speed up servicing carburetors.
During this procedure, the carburetor is overhauled without removing it from
the intake manifold. The procedure is outlined well in the instructions but
is probably a little involved for a beginner.

However, before you get too far into the diagnosis, try testing the base
gasket with carb cleaner and let us know how that goes.

Eric

 

Eric,
Great post. Your advice was excellent. My first guess was a defective stop
action solenoid but when I re-read the original post--I now realize that I
would have been wrong. I don't think that he mentioned whether it had a
standard or auto. transmission.
Jason