1987 civic 1.5 SOHC Automatic carburated runs rough

[Doug_I]

I just wanted to thank everyone for your input. I took the car to the carb shop that did the rebuild, and after working on it all day friday he told me that he suspected that the carb had been on fire at one point and warped the core.
He is going to get another carb rebuild it and give it to me at no extra charge!


Hi everyone

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

I have been working on this car after work in a tent! with a small propane heater. I really need some help to finish this car.

Still having problems...I put in a new base plate for the carb, and replaced a few more crunchy vac lines.
The car runs terrible. it almost feels like it's running on two cylinders, it stumbles and only smooths out around 2500 RPM. if I take my foot off the gas or put it in gear, it will stall.

Below is the short story of what happened to get me here.......


My mother in law's civic just "stopped runing". lucky for me after comming back from a 90 mile trip, it died two blocks from the house.
It had spark, getting gas etc etc
The most special thing It has is an interference engine, and no compression. In other words if everything is not in time the pistons will crash into the valves.
The keyway broke on the cam sprocket and turned just enough to bend all the exhaust valves.
This will also happen if the timming belt breaks .

Time for the fix:
New valves
Had a machine shop check for cracks in that nice aluminum head.
Head Gasket set....
water pump and timing belt
since i had it apart this far what the heck lets put a new alt belt on.
After all this work and skinned knuckles I did get it running again.


Now there is a nice clear oil puddle under the car
Not oil, but power steering fluid
Replace the high pressure line....oh look at all the nice rust
replace the other steel lines
IT LIVES No wait the rear wheel cyl just blew out
IT LIVES No wait it seems to have 4 dry rotted tires
IT LIVES
Simple request--nice easy short distance breakin period

Now after paying a towtruck for a 30 mile tow the carb took a dump.

The carb shop wants $200 for a rebuild

about $600 ( update $1000) into
the car that we bought for $200

The car ran for about 400 miles, then just didn't want to run.
I had the carb rebuilt, cap rotor and wires.
new seal for the cam, and another timing belt
New base plate for the carb.
new brake booster& master cyl
and replaced about 99% of the vaccuum lines
And here we are

[imzjustplayin]

damn...

[GasSavers_Erik]

Does it crank over evenly? Or does the cranking speed increase and decrease? Uneven cranking is a sign that one or two of teh cylinders have low compression.

I had a machine shop rebuild the cylinder head on my 87 civic and they didn't tighten down the auxiliary valve retainers well enough on several cylinders- so it was cranking funny and missing on that cylinder just a few hours after I fired it up for the first time. If this is the case, eventually it will melt an o-ring that keeps oil from the valve cover area out of the cylinder and then you will burn lots of oil and even foul the spark plugs. A few months later, the same thing happened on a different cylinder, so I went ahead and torqued them all down.

Do a compression check and if those two cylinders are low, then pull off the valve cover and try to wiggle the top of the valve springs of the axillary valves (the little ones on the front of the engine). If they are loose, remove the front rocker arm shaft and use a 13/16 deepwell socket to remove those aux valves (from the top). You will need to extract and turn over the copper sealing washer that the valve seats against. Also inspect the o-ring at the top of the assembly.

Do you have good spark? Can you pull the plug wires off one at a time and isolate which cylinders are missing? Does it run better if you advance the ignition timing? Is the gas exactly halfway up the inspection window on the driver's side of the carb? Might there be water in the gas?

The vacuum advance diaphragm on the distributor is may have a hole in it.

If you think there may be more bad vacuum hoses, a last resort may be to do a devac (removal of 90% of the vacuum hoses) http://www.redpepperracing.com/forum...opic=36398&hl=

[Doug_I]

Erik
Thanks for the input, and the link was very helpful since redpepperracing has almost the complete service manual on his site.
I cleaned the plugs and regapped them, and did some other tests.
I did get the car to run good cold, but still coughs and stalls as soon as it gets warm.

[GasSavers_Erik]

Check that your choke butterfly is opening slowly as it warms up.

Also check valve lash- If the valve clearance is too narrow, the valves might not seal (close) properly when the engine gets warm.

[spotaneagle]

most cars 1990 and older are junk

I owned a similar civic about 10 years ago with 50k on it from 1986 and everything broke on that car, i sold it as soon as i got it running

i dont need to deal with that

[spotaneagle]

Originally Posted by Doug_I

Erik
Thanks for the input, and the link was very helpful since redpepperracing has almost the complete service manual on his site.
I cleaned the plugs and regapped them, and did some other tests.
I did get the car to run good cold, but still coughs and stalls as soon as it gets warm.

So did you try to swap out the gas?, start there...

my friend has a car that has been sitting for months and does that same thing

i told his to do this when it happened last time and it worked...

[Doug_I]

Originally Posted by Erik

Check that your choke butterfly is opening slowly as it warms up.

Also check valve lash- If the valve clearance is too narrow, the valves might not seal (close) properly when the engine gets warm.

The choke works fine. I just took the carb back to the shop that "rebuilt" it.
He told me there was a tube inside that was packed with rust.
I put it back on sunday and it runs better but has a dead spot just off of idle. If the pedal is pressed past the spot it runs ok.
I might be taking the whole car to the carb shop this time, but they told me it ran good on the bench equipment. I drove the car for an easy 22 miles Sunday to see if it might straighten out. It had the same spot weather it was from a stand still or going 30 MPH.

I did replace the exhaust valves and throw a head gasket on it, so i'll recheck the valve lash.

[Doug_I]

Originally Posted by spotaneagle

most cars 1990 and older are junk

I owned a similar civic about 10 years ago with 50k on it from 1986 and everything broke on that car, i sold it as soon as i got it running

i dont need to deal with that

I totally agree, but the car belongs to my mother-in-law, and I am presently living there, so since I used to be a mechanic I am stuck with it since she loves the car, dumped almost $1000 into it. I have put in about 70 Hours into it. I know fix one thing two more break.