My car has 100k miles on it. I had the carb cleaned two years ago. Now intermittantly, it runs very roughly while idling and will sometimes die. I’ve been told by a mechanic that it’s running too rich. Also, sometimes when I start up I’ll see a puff of white smoke come out of the tail pipe, which I’m told is oil and not related to the carb problem. She otherwise runs fine and is a champ on the freeway.
Honda no longer makes the carb or the parts. Do I just have the carb cleaned out again to the tune of $150-225 and hope that it works? I’ve been told to find a Honda carb specialist, but so far haven’t found one in Los Angeles.
Any info would be much appreciated.
Mechanics who are experienced with these nightmare carbs have pretty much retired. These carbs were hard to rebuild properly due to the excessive additions to try and get them as efficient as possible. The new mechanics have all trained on fuel injection, with some having Holley and Weber carb experience. These carbs are much simpler and easy to rebuilt and tune.
If a replacement is needed, and I would guess that it is, you can get a kit that will replace the factory carb with a Weber. I did this to a 1986 Honda motor in a Prelude many moons ago. The kit at the time was less than $300, and gave me a highly tune-able 2-bbl progressive carb that gave me great gas mileage.
The problem might not be with the carburator. But with a carburator vacuum control solenoid.
If you look at all the vacuum hoses at the back of the carburator you’ll see they enter a large plastic box mounted on the firewall. Inside this plastic box are all the carburator vacuum control solenoids. If the idle solenoid has failed or if there’s a loose or cracked vacuum hose it can cause this problem.
I had a 1985 carburated Honda, and I went to local auto recycler and pulled the entire solenoid box from a vehicle so I would have extras on hand. And I did replace a couple, but never had to mess with the carburator itself.
Tester
Search the web for a kit to replace with a Weber 32-36 DGEV.