I got a 1989 Honda accord dx I needed to rebuild the carburetor but upon removing it I found my self at a huge loss I couldn’t reach about 3 of the hoses connected and I had to cut another I decided id bring it to a shop and just have them do it. so I began putting it back together I made sure to put all the hoses back in the correct place(someone had all ready marked them from trying to fix it b4 me) the only thing I wasn’t able to do was screw one of the 4 bolt holding the carb down , after I got it back together I started it up and I sounded really groggy and white smoke came from my exhaust at an alarming rate the car would stall out anytime I let off the gas when I held the gas down slightly to try to remove any oil that was burning I heard the sound of running water I stuck my head under the car while holding down the gas and I saw what I thought to be gas so I quickly shut down the engine upon further inspection I found the liquid was green (anti freeze) Can anyone tell me what I did?
It’s been a while, but you may have a carburetor that uses coolant to open and close the choke. The coolant lines should just go to the choke located at the near the top of the carburetor at one end of that upper plate or the other.
Yup. You know that hose you cut… ? Guess what was flowing through it?
Good thing for tow trucks. At times like this they can be lifesavers.
No choke uses coolant to operate.
But, coolant is introduce into the intake manifold to prevent icing when temperatures get cold.
Remove the carb and look at the base to see if there’s any coolant flow passages between the carb and intake manifold. If there are, that’s where the coolant is leaking into the engine because the carb can’t be tightened down.
Tester
Yes there are, but you may be right about a coolant passage in the base.
Those carbs are nightmares.
I’d look for a Weber DGEV kit.
If I remember correctly there is a coolant passage through the base of the carburetor to help prevent icing in cold weather. You either have a bad gasket at the base of the carb (as a result of partially removing it) or a leaky coolant hose down there. At this point save yourself any more hassle and just pay the $75 tow bill to get it to the shop.
BTW, many places no longer work on carburetors. Make sure the place you use is familiar and able to repair yours. The tools and equipment needed to successfully repair them are becoming as rare as the experience needed to work on them. Carburetors are stupid and I hate them. I just rebuilt one today. I’ll be glad when they’re all gone.
Ase, I think they’re brilliant application of the laws of fluid dynamics to meter fuel. Obsolete, but not stupid. But I understand your emotion.
TSM, when I say stupid, I mean that they lack the ability to properly meter fuel in a variety of conditions. And they’re full of moving and wearing parts.
Pull a vacuum hose off a fuel injected engine, the fuel mixture will soon return to normal. Change in altitude, the car compensates. No choke to stick, no accelerator pump to wear out or leak. They’re dirty and smelly.
Carburetors are a wonderful feat of engineering and design. I love nothing better than the sound of a 4-barrel wide open. But the days of a carb being used on a reliable daily driver are over. For what the guy paid today to rebuild a Varajet he could have bought, well, a lot of stuff.
Just curious, given the simplicity and advantages, it sort of makes you wonder why it took so long for fuel injection to replace carbs. I can understand carbs for a 1910 Model T. But for a 1970 Mustang? Was there some kind of materials or technology needed that wasn’t available until the late 1970’s?
Bicycles, I wonder the same thing. Why did it take so long to invent the bicycle? People would have liked to have a relatively inexpensive, horse-less way to move about. And spoke wheels had been used for thousands of years. But the bicycle, even the pedal-less kind you just push with your feet, didn’t appear until the 1800’s.
Vacuum operated fuel inject has been around for generations, but it was always complicated and unreliable. It’s the electronics that make modern fuel injection so far superior to carbs. They allow precise enough control over the injectors to enable constant high pressure fuel feed with “square wave” operated injection, and it’s the high pressure that makes the fuel vaporize so well. From that greatly-improved vaporization comes high fuel-surface-area ratios and from that comes the great improvements. Surface-area-per-volume really matters in fuel delivery, because only the hydrocarbon atoms in direct contact with oxygen will split to bond with the oxygen atoms, and from that action comes everything good. The bigger the droplets, the less surface area per volume, and the slower the flamefront propagates and the less of the fuel gets converted to torque. The power stroke is a very limited timeframe, it’s optimum zone to convert the explosion to effective crankshaft turning even shorter.
The bicycle was invented by DaVinci five centuries ago. Materials and manufacturing technologies just took 350 years to catch up. If ever an advanced alien from another planet came to Earth, DaVinci had to have been that alien. Countless designs of his were centuries ahead of their time.
“The bicycle was invented by DaVinci five centuries ago.”
This is almost certainly not true:
http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycle.html
I think the main reason the bicycle wasn’t invented until the 1800’s is that it just never occurred to anyone that a two-wheeled vehicle could be stable.
I concede that there is a debate on the sketch. Considering the larger body of DaVinci’s work and the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands of his papers are believed to remain missing, I’m not prepared to deny him the credit. His bicycle is rudimentary, but certainly fits the criteria. And I believe it was actually done by him.
A PBS special on DaVinci made an interesting point recently. They pointed out that historically DaVinci’s papers have always been analyzed by artists, and only recently have they begun to be analyzed by engineers. He pointed out that they’re actually engineering drawings, and the perspective is completely different. He suggested that when engineers really begin to analyze DaVinci’s body of work there will be countless surprises. Having numerous books on DaVinci, and being a true fan, I have no doubt that that’s true.
If a tow truck is needed to move a '89 carbureted Honda, there can be only one destination and it’s not a repair shop…
If the coolant hasn’t damaged the engine installing the Webber/Holley progressive 2bbl is a somewhat viable option. Doing so will eliminate the spaghetti of vacuum hoses.
Here’s another way the OP might consider as a solution to this 89 Honda carb problem. To eliminate carb problems and get better mpg and/or performance, some classic car buffs dump the carb entirely and retrofit to throttle body electronic fuel injection. I’ve never looked into the details, but I think the way it works conceptually at least, you just unbolt the carb, and bolt the throttle body EFI unit in it’s place. Presumably you purchase an EFI unit which is compatible with your engine, as the software at least is probably different engine to engine. The EFI unit’s got an air flow measuring sensor, fuel injectors, and a computer to control it all. You’d have to replace the cam actuated low pressure fuel pump with an electronic high pressure fuel pump too.
Maybe somebody here has already done this. If so, what is your experience?
One caution: If the OP lives in an emissions regulated state, talk to the DMV to make sure a carb to throttle body EFI upgrade is legal.
Edit: You might have to weld in a port to install an O2 sensor in the exhaust system too.
@GeorgeSanJose , a Weber carb kit is far less expensive and more reliable. The fuel pump doesn’t need to be changed and a vast array of vacuum lines can be easily eliminated. I put one on an old VW and one on a mid-80’s Honda. Both easily outlasted the remaining life of both cars. Both kits ran just under $300 complete. Probably a bit more now. Most add-on EFI kits run well over $2000 With most at around $3k.
I put a Weber on my '81 Accord, along with a non-CVCC head with bigger valves and an exhaust header.
After playing with the jetting I was getting the same MPG as stock, and enough torque to kill transmission bearings every couple of years.
It sounds from the comments of more experienced folks than I on this topic that the Weber carb upgrade is the most practical of the aftermarket alternatives. A friend of mine proudly owns a – let’s just say – less than cosmetically perfect 67 Porsche 911 and is always talking about the importance of Weber carbs to his car’s engine performance. I think he may have two carbs on that engine, as he usually mentions them in plural. “I got my Webers tuned and working good over the weekend”. I think he may know more about the idiosyncrasies of Weber carbs than Mr. Weber himself.
There’s another carb brand I hear about from time to time for older cars, “VU” I think is the name. I may have the name wrong, but as I recall it sounds something like VU. Just curious, if VU is actually a carb brand, how is a VU carb different from a Weber carb?
You might be thinking of SU carbs, the standard on lots of older British sports cars. They’re side-draft, though.