Carbed or Fuel injected
 

Soon I will be in the market for an HF honda, was wondering what would be the better buy. The carbed version of the HF or the fuel inject. And if all other specs were the same condition mileage, ect...

You'll have to go back to 84-87 for a carbed version of the CRX HF (its a CVCC engine). The older carbed ones should be a bit cheaper, but the CVCC engine can eat head gaskets unless a special reinforced replacement is used.

I have had good luck with my CVCC carb and the whole system is much simpler than fuel injection.

some of those early fuel injected (is it accualy fuel injected to throttle body injected?) systems arent the brightest/quickest adjusting in the world...

id go for carbed...

I know that's true for many auto manufacturers but Hondas early systems generally aren't problematic.

The carbs however that remained on some Honda cars until 1989, are extremely complex, cost thousands new, and most mechanics won't touch them when they break. I've heard some of the carb'd 80s Hondas do get better MPG (when they are running right) than the injected version but the hassle and complexity of Honda 80s carbs is worth the hit in the MPG.

The 80's carbed Honda's are good cars, but they are just way to complex. There must be 50 miles of vacuum lines under the hood of one of those cars! haha

LOL so its nothing like a GM car that has ohh maybe 6 vac lines?(plug em all off and it will still start up lol) i think when i replaced em all i bought maybe 5 feet of vacum line lol.

hmm i dunno, id check honda forums

I'm not a mechanic, but I disassembled, cleaned/blew out all passages, replaced gaskets/o rings and reassembled my 87 CVCC carb without a problem. It started right up when I was done. It helped that it ran OK before I cleaned it so I didn't have any major issues of worn/damaged parts.

I've cleaned/rebuilt 4 carbs before this one so I did have some experience. It was the most complex carb I've redone, but everything was pretty straight forward. Labeling the 15 vacuum hoses that plugged into it took quite a long time...

the 1985-87 Honda crx hf carburetor has around 58 vacuum hoses, and you need unless you never take your foot off the accelerator, you live someplace that is always 90 degrees, your engine is always warmed up, your vehicle never changes elevation, in other words, they do ALOT of stuff, they cut the fuel when you decelerate, they fine tune the mix, they control the warm air intake, they control the idle speed.
If you get one of these cars buying the top end rebuild kit and spending an afternoon putting new seals in can be a good thing, it also gives you a chance to make sure everything is clean and working right, if you check on some of the Honda forums, people with short attention spans and no attention to detail HATE these carburetors, so if you fit in that class then go with fuel injection.

The only reason why some of the carbed Hondas might get better MPG than EFI models is because they are smaller, lighter, and generally less powerful. But this certainly doesn't mean that carbs are better than EFI.

Yep theres alot of vacuum in that beast. My 81 civic had over 20 foot of vacuum. Carbs are ok they just take a little longer to warm up in the cold

I'd search out a 90-91 fuel injected CRX HF.

A 1988-1989 model would probably be a better bet. The 1988-1989 models have the exact same engine and body style as the 1990-1991. But, because they don't have those stupid door-mounted seatbelts, they are MUCH lighter (1819 pounds for 1988 and 1834 pounds for 1989 vs 1967 pounds for 1990-1991). This will give the earlier 2G HFs both better fuel economy AND better acceleration.

That is true, but I would simply search for an 88-91 HF and just take the one you find in the best shape. They are getting old, and finding one all stock (or any civic for that matter) and in somewhat decent shape is hard in itself. :thumbup:

Hard to find is an understatement! They are getting pretty much impossible to find.:(