39 replies to this topic

[zakats]

the vacuum mess is more hassle than it is worth especially if you are not in an emissions controlled area- as in it is probably harder to fix it than it is to just remove it all.

what I meant by no ac boost/etc. is that when your air condition compressor turns on, it takes power from the engine so the engine needs a little extra throttle to keep the engine idling properly. lets say that at normal idle your throttle is open to about 5% but when the a/c comes on, its kicked up to about 8%

this is really not a very big deal and can be taken care of quite easily.

does your air conditioner even work? if not, don't worry about it.

[greenleafar]

Well, i finnally got around to doing the devac. I took all of the lines out and everything. but a friend of mine decided that it would be more "fun" to put in a different carb. he wanted to put in a ford carb off a v6 mustang. i dont exactly know the model of the carb or anything. it sounded like something that might cause a few complications, but i was interested. so, naturally i went along with it.

And, well, now, the car works.....mostly. it turns on, and it accelerates just fine when you press on the gas quickly, but when i try accelerating just a bit, to about 2-3 k rpms, it stutters and dies. it drive great once its already going, but getting it to go is the tricky part. its definitely not safe to drive right now. i wouldnt want to get stuck in the middle of a street after i try to go at a green light!

its a pretty interesting settup that we did. we kinda improvised a bit. my friend has some experience, but it was kinda of a experiment, and i have learned a bit in the process. he did remove the secondary flap opening mechanism.... dont know what the techincal phrase is.... because according to him, my little 4 wouldnt need all of that much power any way as the carb is meant for a v6 and v8s. but i dont think that would cause my problem. also, it still idles kinda high, but im not worried about that right now either. i dont have a air cleaner on the carb because first of all, i dont have one for the carb yet, and second of all, the carb by itself barely fits under the hood. i would have to mutilate my hood and add a air scoop to it. im actually kinda looking forward to that though.

I was thinking that maybe i didnt plug up something that needed to be plugged up after the devac. but as i recall, most of that had to be done to the carb. i will double check the devac write up and see where or if i messed up.

now... i was thinking that maybe my problem is that gas pump might not be working right or something. it is pretty old afterall. when its sputtering and dying, it kinda sounds to me that its not getting enough gas. so, i was wondering if that could be the problem. i really dont know if it would be or not, as the car accelerates just fine at a higher rpm, but at light acceleration, its tends to dye like i said. does anybody think that the pump could be it?

i do have a fuel pump handy. its a electric purolator. if i do put that in, what do i do with the return line? how would i set that up? would i just plug up that return line coming from the factory pump in the engine bay, or what?

[DarkHand]

Do you have any pictures? I'm curious as to how he adapted the Ford carb to the intake.

[greenleafar]

i dont have pictures taken yet, but i will post some up here soon. we basically just mated the 2 base plates together. pretty simple and rustic, some modifications and drilling were done and some aluminum bondo was used, and wallah, i made a custom base plate. it was actually pretty easy. I thought about taking pictures as i was doing the work, but i didnt have a camera at hand.

but, any suggestions my problem anyone?

[ktm300]

That carb is prob too big, and will be a pain to tune and make it reliable enough for a daily driver. I suggest putting the stock one back on for now, I have the stock one on my 87 DX. I've done the de'vac and put an aftermarket "turbo" style muffler.

Recently I changed the vacume secondaries to mechanical, with a simple ziptie. Now in any gear after half throttle it feels like I'm spraying nitrous, ...well not exactly but there is a dramatic difference when the secondaries open up. There are a few other mods that can be done to the stock carb that will make it perform better and still retain stock reliability.

Double check all the changes you did with the de'vac, then check your ignition timing and tune the stock carb. If you decide to keep the mustang carb on, im sure there will be someone here able to help you tune it! Good luck either way.


Tuning stock carb

[Captain Regular]

Well, i finnally got around to doing the devac. I took all of the lines out and everything. but a friend of mine decided that it would be more "fun" to put in a different carb. he wanted to put in a ford carb off a v6 mustang. i dont exactly know the model of the carb or anything. it sounded like something that might cause a few complications, but i was interested. so, naturally i went along with it.

And, well, now, the car works.....mostly. it turns on, and it accelerates just fine when you press on the gas quickly, but when i try accelerating just a bit, to about 2-3 k rpms, it stutters and dies. it drive great once its already going, but getting it to go is the tricky part. its definitely not safe to drive right now. i wouldnt want to get stuck in the middle of a street after i try to go at a green light!

its a pretty interesting settup that we did. we kinda improvised a bit. my friend has some experience, but it was kinda of a experiment, and i have learned a bit in the process. he did remove the secondary flap opening mechanism.... dont know what the techincal phrase is.... because according to him, my little 4 wouldnt need all of that much power any way as the carb is meant for a v6 and v8s. but i dont think that would cause my problem. also, it still idles kinda high, but im not worried about that right now either. i dont have a air cleaner on the carb because first of all, i dont have one for the carb yet, and second of all, the carb by itself barely fits under the hood. i would have to mutilate my hood and add a air scoop to it. im actually kinda looking forward to that though.

I was thinking that maybe i didnt plug up something that needed to be plugged up after the devac. but as i recall, most of that had to be done to the carb. i will double check the devac write up and see where or if i messed up.

now... i was thinking that maybe my problem is that gas pump might not be working right or something. it is pretty old afterall. when its sputtering and dying, it kinda sounds to me that its not getting enough gas. so, i was wondering if that could be the problem. i really dont know if it would be or not, as the car accelerates just fine at a higher rpm, but at light acceleration, its tends to dye like i said. does anybody think that the pump could be it?

i do have a fuel pump handy. its a electric purolator. if i do put that in, what do i do with the return line? how would i set that up? would i just plug up that return line coming from the factory pump in the engine bay, or what?

Oh, damn. That's a lot of stuff to throw at the board to try and fix a problem. You have to keep in mind that the carb has TWO functions. It controls the RATIO of fuel to air that is moving into the engine, and it controls the AMOUNT of fuel/air mixture that enters the engine. And the carb is "powered" not by fuel or anything, but by the SUCTION generated as the pistons move in sync with the valves in the engine. Your tiny 1.5L 4 cylinder engine isn't "sucking" nearly as much mix as that Ford carb was designed, but the ratio should be about the same. Your problem with slow acceleration might have to do with the (likely) lack of a CVCC throat on the Ford carb. CVCC is that small third hole in the intake manifold (and the miniature throat on the stock carb) that dumps a smaller amount of richer mixture directly to the spark plug. It becomes less important as you open the throttle and the rest of the engine gets fuel, but if you don't have the throttle open much, it's pretty much a big factor in what keeps your motor idling. With your giant Ford carb, you probably don't have CVCC and your new "idle" is probably just the throttle being open a bit, as if you had the gas pedal down just a hair. And when you open up such a large air passage in that carb, the suction from your little engine isn't enough to pull enough fuel into that stream to keep it running. I would put the stock carb back on. Or even just find a more appropriately-sized carb. You can richen the overall mixture and adjust the throat on ANY carb closer to our size-range to compensate for the lack of CVCC, although you'll lose a bit of efficiency, it'll be driveable. I have a stock carb devacced and I'm getting 35-36 MPG out of my DX. The Ford carb is an interesting project, and I'm sure it COULD work, but it seems like it would be kinda...wasteful, and a little inappropriate. You want a better match for your VOLUME of fuel and air.
EDIT: My description of the CVCC system was off. It actually opens proportionally with the rest of the carb. You open the main throats, it opens up with them. But it is quite a bit more RICH than the other flow, and it goes directly to the spark plug, making a rich-mixture "super spark" to better ignite the rest of the mix in the chamber. It's sort of like running a small section of the combustion rich so the larger section can run more lean, saving gas. The idle mixture is actually controlled by the idle mix screw in the base of the carb, and it releases fuel into the mix BELOW the throttle plates, so even if the carb is completely closed, it still gets fuel. What you're aiming to do (with the Ford carb) is to emulate what the stock carb would do if you had the CVCC throat closed off. You would need to richen the overall mixture, which means you would probably need to choke it more than it would normally be choked on a Ford of it's proper size. If there's a mixture screw, open it up, too. You need your "main" mixture to be rich to compensate for the lack of a rich mix in the CVCC system. So the whole thing will run rich. You COULD bypass the idle fuel jet by simply adjusting the idle SPEED screw up, which holds the throttle open just a bit. It's the same thing as holding the gas pedal down just a bit, you theoretically wouldn't NEED an idle mix if you're "idle" was an open throttle.

To sum up, what we'd REALLY need is as much info on this Ford carb as you can give us. Everything you can think of. Pictures are awesome, if you've got em.

Edited by Captain Regular, 21 February 2009 - 12:11 AM.

[greenleafar]

wow, wish i had known that earlier. i decided to try out a little experiment. i wasnt thinking it was gonna work, but i was already prepared to get a new carb. what i did was just basically remove the part of the ford carb base that was blocking off the cvcc hole much like i saw a webber adapter plate do for their webers. to me, it was just a long shot, but i though hey, if it doesnt work, ill just need to replace the carb any way. so, now that base plate is all choped up and when i put it on, with my fingers crossed, the car wouldnt even stay on. it starts, shoots up to about 3k rpm and then dies. i can keep it alive for just a bit by keeping the gas down some, but its no use trying to keep it on. it just dies. oh, and theres a constant whistling sound probably from the air flow around the edges inside the base or something. it really ran alot better when the cvcc hole was blocked off!!! and here i though it just might work!! ohwell. maybe theres still something that i can do about it. i will take pictures of everything tomorrow.

also, i was looking for carb to replace that one with, and i found a weber 32/36. but its a dfav instead of the usual dgv. whats really the difference besides being mirrored imaged and can they be used on hondas?

[kaymo]

you engine will get much better gas mileage if you use the CVCC system. the car was designed to run with it and yes you can get rid of it, but think about it. it has its own valve. its own lobe on the camshaft.

blocking off the cvcc and it running "better" may or may not be anything more than a quick fix for nothing more than an issue with your factory carb.

go to the junkyard, get another carb plate the best you can find, and come home and rtv it on your intake. check out my carb thread in this section. once i did the mechanical secondaries, devac, and more important rreeeeeeebuild, i had a top notch running 1.3 that had no lack of power. its not hard to do it yourself and the rebuild kit is cheap. do not be afraid to tear into the carb, but consider buying a whole carb when you are at the JY and just snag the baseplate as an extra.
while you are at it, block off your EGR and Air Valve. worthless things.

oh and when you devac you can just break the outside plastic bits off and leave the rest of the thermovalves stuck in the intake.

[greenleafar]

well, i would use the factory carb, but i dont have it anymore. i traded with a friend for the ford carb and he paid me 40 on top of that. that carb is now on another car that belongs to his brother. i cant really just take it back. now i wish i had just kept it. but, regrets wont get me anywhere. but for now, i really want to see if i can find a way to fix this problem with the ford carb i have now if theres a way before i spend anymore money on another carb and all that.

i guess just just cutting away the part of the ford base plate that blocked off the cvcc wasnt the right thing to do or what? is there too much fuel getting into it? or not enough? any ideas?

also, kinda still want to know about that dfav. ive never heard anyone on this site even mention them.

[Captain Regular]

DON'T USE RTV!
I learned this the hard way, gas dissolves RTV quite nicely and leaves you with a rubbery jelly in your works. But I find this very interesting and I'm going to offer what I can to get this working. The only credentials I have are my own devac and carb rebuild and use of a manual choke (which may simplify your situation a LOT) and I'm now getting stock-or-better performance and regular 34-37 MPG out of my DX.
I don't see any real way of doing that with an "oversized" carb that lacks CVCC. Basically, you start out with the carb set to lean, and richen it up until you can get the engine to start. I know nothing about what this Ford carb has or looks like. Does it have what we know as an idle mixture screw? Is idle SPEED controlled the same way? I'm thinking probably yes, but I'm not sure. If they are: I don't THINK it should matter if you block the CVCC off or not, but you can't expose it to anything outside the throats on the carb. Depending on your base plate, it might be easier to block it off. Assuming that there's fuel in the float bowl and fuel is being delivered to the carb properly (basically just fast enough to keep up with use) this SHOULD come down to adjusting the mixture and idle speed. Like I said, start lean. That mixture ONLY applies when there's no throttle open, once you open the throttle body up, exposing the carb to engine vacuum, everything else kicks in and that idle jet is like trying to supplement a fire hose with a squirt gun.
What kind of choke is on the Ford carb? I know I COULD NOT get mine to start at ALL, even with the weather warm, without choking the carb. And I had taken off all the automatic choke stuff already. Especially if it's an older carb, get yourself a manual choke kit. They're like $10, it'll never break, and it makes an awesome story. I put mine right inside the door, kinda below the dome light dimmer knob. Works great. So choke theory 101. Remember how the engine sucks air through the carb, and there's basically just holes in the sides of those "throats" with fuel reserves sitting inside them? When the air gets sucked through, some of that suction pulls a little fuel out of the holes, down into the little whirlwind and that's how it mixes fuel and air. The amount of suction is based on how fast the engine TURNS. Now if you block off the flow of air from the TOP of the carb, the SUCK stays the same, and it ends up pulling more GAS. Like putting your hand over a vacuum cleaner, it sucks your skin instead of the air around it. The purpose of the choke is to boost (usually just until the engine warms up) the amount of fuel in that mix to make it easier to start. When the choke is open, you'll run leaner, which is great once the engine is warm. More efficient and more responsive. (The engine has to be warm because if it's cool, the gas doesn't evaporate fast enough to burn properly. More fuel is needed to make it burn easier.) But you'll need some sort of choke control, and anything that came with the Ford carb will likely operate just plain WRONG for your smaller engine. Install this kit so that pulling the knob CLOSES (choking) the choke plate. You could do it the other way, but then you'll be doing most of your driving with a big ass knob sticking out of your dash.

Anyway, Once you can choke the engine to get it started, THEN you start making your adjustments. Start lean and richen the mixture until the engine can stay running with the choke OPEN (you'll need to get it to warm up, and you may need to sit in adjusting the choke and keeping on the gas pedal) But once you can idle it without the throttle down, even if it's slow as dirt, you can up the idle speed control, or even just adjust the throttle cable to hold it open a bit. Same thing, really. Or you could really do it the other way, tighten the throttle up so that it's open anyway, start the engine and work down to your desired speed, then tighten (leaner) the mixture adjustment until the engine starts to sound like it's gonna die, then back off a bit. You'll be smoky, and you'll run rich and you'll probably get low-to-mid 20s for gas mileage, but I absolutely think this can work.

Also, keep in mind, that it is TOTALLY possible to screw up USE of the choke. I do it all the time. If it's choked too much, I won't be able to get more than 2 or 3 thousand RPMs out of the engine, and I'll have no power. Open too early, and pressing the throttle just kills the engine. If you can give the throttle a little tap and have it NOT die, you're not too lean. It's taken some getting used to, but it hasn't stalled yet for any reason other than me playing around with it.

[kaymo]

STOP you're doing it backwards...

"but a friend of mine decided that it would be more "fun" to put in a different carb. he wanted to put in a ford carb off a v6 mustang. i dont exactly know the model of the carb or anything. it sounded like something that might cause a few complications, but i was interested. so, naturally i went along with it." "i traded with a friend for the ford carb and he paid me 40 on top of that. that carb is now on another car that belongs to his brother. i cant really just take it back."

uhm, i think you should have been suspicious of why your "friend" wanted the carb so bad. maybe it was to use it to get a civic working properly! LOL

again, if you are trying to make this motor run efficently, reliably, and somewhat decently quick, the factory carb is the way to go.
if you want to be fiddling with it constantly, changing out fouled spark plugs, and chasing around problems you've created for yourself

"but for now, i really want to see if i can find a way to fix this problem with the ford carb i have now if theres a way before i spend anymore money on another carb and all that."

we still dont even know what kind of ford carb this is other than for a v6 mustang. and there lies your first problem. they circled it and highlighted it in blue for those not paying attention. you are trying to FIX things, with FORD parts.
you just dont fix Hondas with Ford parts. you're doing it backwards. its obviously for an engine with more cubes. its obviously going to run rich. you are obscuring your original problem with a much bigger problem! you never make two major changes to one part of your car like this. you did a devac, AND installed a carb that was never meant for a 4cyl. you could have done the devac and still had a problem with something else but you would never know because you just put on the wrong carb. diagnosing this problem will be all but impossible unless you are some sort of old fart engine guru that can magically cobble things together and make them work.

its definately interesting that you made this car run at all with a ford carb from a v6, but there are much better carb swaps that wont give you these sort of issues. canadian carb or a downdraft weber for example. or bike carbs. but other than the canadian carb, all of these swaps are going to give you issues that are beyond your skill level, or most people's for that matter. most car repair shops wont even touch our factory carbs if they are not working right!

take the 40 dollars you got and buy a carb rebuild kit from honda. it is LESS than 40 from the dealership.
sell your ford carb and go the junkyard and get a junkyard carb as clean as you can find. steal the baseplate too. if you are good, you shouldnt pay more than 80 dollars for a used carb you will have to rebuild anyway. make sure you tell them you know its junk sittin on the car and you just need it as a core.

you say you want to fix it without spending alot? then stop making problems for yourself. put the bong down and step away from the ford parts. from one stoner to another let me tell you, you're in over your head. getting the stock carb to act just right can be a hassle let alone a non standard.

"I don't THINK it should matter if you block the CVCC off or not"
captain regular.

if you dont really know, then dont lead someone on. sure you can make the car run without CVCC. im sure there are even people out there that have decently fast CRX's not using a CVCC carb. but you are, and theres no way in hell you would be getting that pretty 37 mpg. it matter ALOT. a head shop i talked to said if you burn out a CVCC valve you will drop cyl just like you lost an intake or exhaust valve. id say its pretty important. its not an afterthought, think of it as its emissions vtec of its time. works best when you dont fuck with it.

oh and about the RTV. sure gas eats it, but im not talking about rubbing it around in the intake, you use it to seal up your factory baseplate to the intake when it doesnt want to seal because its 20 years old. i used too much the first time, but the second time i got it perfect and it works great! lots of people on here have RTV'd intake plates. CHECK OUT MY REBUILD THREAD IN THIS FORUM SECTION. has pics!

in the end, even if you end up running a weber, its always nice to have a working stocker around for when something goes awry. even webers can give you trouble and they sure dont give you the MPG. rebuild a factory one its not that hard! mod it out and make it run well and then go from there. bike carbs or side drafts are alot more fun anyway.

Edited by kaymo, 24 February 2009 - 01:45 AM.

[Captain Regular]

STOP you're doing it backwards...

"but a friend of mine decided that it would be more "fun" to put in a different carb. he wanted to put in a ford carb off a v6 mustang. i dont exactly know the model of the carb or anything. it sounded like something that might cause a few complications, but i was interested. so, naturally i went along with it." "i traded with a friend for the ford carb and he paid me 40 on top of that. that carb is now on another car that belongs to his brother. i cant really just take it back."

uhm, i think you should have been suspicious of why your "friend" wanted the carb so bad. maybe it was to use it to get a civic working properly! LOL

again, if you are trying to make this motor run efficently, reliably, and somewhat decently quick, the factory carb is the way to go.
if you want to be fiddling with it constantly, changing out fouled spark plugs, and chasing around problems you've created for yourself

"but for now, i really want to see if i can find a way to fix this problem with the ford carb i have now if theres a way before i spend anymore money on another carb and all that."

we still dont even know what kind of ford carb this is other than for a v6 mustang. and there lies your first problem. they circled it and highlighted it in blue for those not paying attention. you are trying to FIX things, with FORD parts.
you just dont fix Hondas with Ford parts. you're doing it backwards. its obviously for an engine with more cubes. its obviously going to run rich. you are obscuring your original problem with a much bigger problem! you never make two major changes to one part of your car like this. you did a devac, AND installed a carb that was never meant for a 4cyl. you could have done the devac and still had a problem with something else but you would never know because you just put on the wrong carb. diagnosing this problem will be all but impossible unless you are some sort of old fart engine guru that can magically cobble things together and make them work.

its definately interesting that you made this car run at all with a ford carb from a v6, but there are much better carb swaps that wont give you these sort of issues. canadian carb or a downdraft weber for example. or bike carbs. but other than the canadian carb, all of these swaps are going to give you issues that are beyond your skill level, or most people's for that matter. most car repair shops wont even touch our factory carbs if they are not working right!

take the 40 dollars you got and buy a carb rebuild kit from honda. it is LESS than 40 from the dealership.
sell your ford carb and go the junkyard and get a junkyard carb as clean as you can find. steal the baseplate too. if you are good, you shouldnt pay more than 80 dollars for a used carb you will have to rebuild anyway. make sure you tell them you know its junk sittin on the car and you just need it as a core.

you say you want to fix it without spending alot? then stop making problems for yourself. put the bong down and step away from the ford parts. from one stoner to another let me tell you, you're in over your head. getting the stock carb to act just right can be a hassle let alone a non standard.

"I don't THINK it should matter if you block the CVCC off or not"
captain regular.

if you dont really know, then dont lead someone on. sure you can make the car run without CVCC. im sure there are even people out there that have decently fast CRX's not using a CVCC carb. but you are, and theres no way in hell you would be getting that pretty 37 mpg. it matter ALOT. a head shop i talked to said if you burn out a CVCC valve you will drop cyl just like you lost an intake or exhaust valve. id say its pretty important. its not an afterthought, think of it as its emissions vtec of its time. works best when you dont fuck with it.

oh and about the RTV. sure gas eats it, but im not talking about rubbing it around in the intake, you use it to seal up your factory baseplate to the intake when it doesnt want to seal because its 20 years old. i used too much the first time, but the second time i got it perfect and it works great! lots of people on here have RTV'd intake plates. CHECK OUT MY REBUILD THREAD IN THIS FORUM SECTION. has pics!

in the end, even if you end up running a weber, its always nice to have a working stocker around for when something goes awry. even webers can give you trouble and they sure dont give you the MPG. rebuild a factory one its not that hard! mod it out and make it run well and then go from there. bike carbs or side drafts are alot more fun anyway.

I've been advising under the impression that the goal here is to get this DRIVEABLE with the Ford carb. I flat-out told him it was going to run rich and smoke a lot, and that his fuel economy would be quite poor. I think to both of us, this is experimental, and I like to experiment. MY situation is my daily driver, but I was fortunate enough to have another vehicle I could use in the mean time. Is this Ford carb going to work WELL? Almost certainly not? Are there better carbs? Hell yes, ideally the stock Keihin, but the difference between THOSE carbs and HIS carb is that he HAS this one. I know what he's thinking, I think. I don't see how anything he does with the carb can ruin his engine or anything more serious than...not HAVING a carb, so I think the whole thing is experimental. DEFINITELY get a smaller carb if you can, the stock carb is a GOOD CARB. But if you WANT to keep trying with this Ford, I bet it can be done, but I can't guarantee what it will be like.

[greenleafar]

You are very right captain, this is just experimental. or rather, it was. up until now, this car was more of a toy for me since i didnt need a daily driver. i plan on starting work in about 2 weeks or so, and i will need a car to get around, though, i can use my dads truck if i dont have this car running anytime soon for a while. i wouldnt want to have to use that thing though as it gulps gas down. its a chevy 2500 (poor man maker) i really wanted to get this carb to work just purely for the novelty of having a ford carb on my honda, but not for any real practical purposes. i wasnt really worried about mpg, unless it was less than the truck. i have been looking for a stock carb and i have found one, so i will have something to fall back on incase, which i just might have to end up doing. this is a great learning experience for me! i think the best way to learn something new is by just diving straight into it. but likewise, i wouldnt have started this if it was my dd. i still have those 2 weeks to keep trying with this ford carb, and maybe even a bit more. in the meantime i would still like to keep trying if its doable. Kaymo, please just chill a little. no need to get worked up about any of this. its not like im doing this just because im a ignorant fool, even if i am a little foolish, im not really ignorant. like i said, this is just a experiment and something fun to play with while i didnt have anything else to do in the meantime. so, relax a little, life is too short. also, i dont do drugs, never have, and unless they are pain killers for when i break something or for surgerry or something like that, i dont think i ever will. but thank you for trying to help out. and thanks to u too captain regular.

but apart from that, today i took off the carb and the plates and i discovered that the little hole on the intake was spilling water into the intake. not sure how or why, but it was. there was water all inside the intake passages. figured out it comes directly from the radiator by blowing into it with a vacum hose. i plugged it up as best as i could and put everything back with my fingers crossed that maybe that might help. and it did, a little bit atleast. it still wouldnt idle or anything good, but atleast it felt....welll.....just a bit better i guess.....dont really know how to explain it. i tried messing with the idle screw and almost got to idle, but i couldnt get it just right. it seems that the car just kinda dies if its in the lower 4k or less rpm range. figured this out when i turne the idle screw a whole lot and the cars revs shot way past the redline. i quickly turned off the car and backed off quite a bit on the idle screw but i still couldnt get it to idle. i realize now though that this carb shoots out way too much gasoline as just pressing the gas pedal a bit was enough to make it rev really high. thats considering it didnt die while trying to get past the first half of the rev spectrum.

also, wtf is rtv? some kind of sealant? i used something called "make a gasket" or something like that. it said that it was gasoline resistant but i proved it wasnt by cleaning the excess that was smeared on my fingers with gasoline. so, im kinda worried that it will start eating it out from under the gaskets. or maybe im just a bit paranoid. i thought i smelled a little bit of burnt rubber though. worried a bit now...

As promised, here are some pics. Enjoy!! if u need or want more, let me know.
Honda Ford

[Captain Regular]

You are very right captain, this is just experimental. or rather, it was. up until now, this car was more of a toy for me since i didnt need a daily driver. i plan on starting work in about 2 weeks or so, and i will need a car to get around, though, i can use my dads truck if i dont have this car running anytime soon for a while. i wouldnt want to have to use that thing though as it gulps gas down. its a chevy 2500 (poor man maker) i really wanted to get this carb to work just purely for the novelty of having a ford carb on my honda, but not for any real practical purposes. i wasnt really worried about mpg, unless it was less than the truck. i have been looking for a stock carb and i have found one, so i will have something to fall back on incase, which i just might have to end up doing. this is a great learning experience for me! i think the best way to learn something new is by just diving straight into it. but likewise, i wouldnt have started this if it was my dd. i still have those 2 weeks to keep trying with this ford carb, and maybe even a bit more. in the meantime i would still like to keep trying if its doable. Kaymo, please just chill a little. no need to get worked up about any of this. its not like im doing this just because im a ignorant fool, even if i am a little foolish, im not really ignorant. like i said, this is just a experiment and something fun to play with while i didnt have anything else to do in the meantime. so, relax a little, life is too short. also, i dont do drugs, never have, and unless they are pain killers for when i break something or for surgerry or something like that, i dont think i ever will. but thank you for trying to help out. and thanks to u too captain regular.

but apart from that, today i took off the carb and the plates and i discovered that the little hole on the intake was spilling water into the intake. not sure how or why, but it was. there was water all inside the intake passages. figured out it comes directly from the radiator by blowing into it with a vacum hose. i plugged it up as best as i could and put everything back with my fingers crossed that maybe that might help. and it did, a little bit atleast. it still wouldnt idle or anything good, but atleast it felt....welll.....just a bit better i guess.....dont really know how to explain it. i tried messing with the idle screw and almost got to idle, but i couldnt get it just right. it seems that the car just kinda dies if its in the lower 4k or less rpm range. figured this out when i turne the idle screw a whole lot and the cars revs shot way past the redline. i quickly turned off the car and backed off quite a bit on the idle screw but i still couldnt get it to idle. i realize now though that this carb shoots out way too much gasoline as just pressing the gas pedal a bit was enough to make it rev really high. thats considering it didnt die while trying to get past the first half of the rev spectrum.

also, wtf is rtv? some kind of sealant? i used something called "make a gasket" or something like that. it said that it was gasoline resistant but i proved it wasnt by cleaning the excess that was smeared on my fingers with gasoline. so, im kinda worried that it will start eating it out from under the gaskets. or maybe im just a bit paranoid. i thought i smelled a little bit of burnt rubber though. worried a bit now...

As promised, here are some pics. Enjoy!! if u need or want more, let me know.
Honda Ford

You'd have to drive it to see what kind of MPG you'd get, you just MIGHT be better off driving the truck, I'm sorry to say. The coolant "leaking" into the manifold is normal if you've got the carb off for a while, it's supposed to warm the stock carb up faster by running hot coolant through the baseplate. I'm not sure how it's routed, but if you block it off, it won't be much trouble. The water'll just dry up and you'll be fine, don't worry about it. If it puddles in the manifold, wipe it up, but no biggie.
You're "crazy high revving" problem isn't related to your idle, it's just...it dumps a lot of gas into the engine. Probably because it's so huge. For starters, it won't go this high under "normal" driving because you'll have a load on the engine, it'll actually be pulling the weight of the car rather than just spinning. But you're going to have a much more sensitive throttle with this bigger carb, just because of that. You'll...get used to it, maybe? Because the carb is so BIG, a small adjustment to the throttle (or the idle speed screw, cuz remember, they're the same thing) is going to have a big impact. You are gonna have to adjust your mixture screw some more. I'm at work now and can't see Flickr pics, so I'll take a look later. But you need to lean the hell out of your IDLE mixture screw for now, I think, then compensate with a hair of an open throttle/idle speed screw. It's a strange balance with those two.
How are you choking it? I think the stock Ford choking mechanism would be totally mismatched to your engine, and the best way is still to do that manually. But I would also start with where you had it running, "idle" at 4k. At least it's running. If it's there, and you can't reduce your idle SPEED screw any more without dying, it's time to start leaning out your idle MIX screw, by tightening it down. It'll be a screw towards the bottom of the carb, but I'll take a look at the pics later to make sure. THAT will drop the fuel amount the engine is getting with the throttle closed, and should drop your idle to a more respectable level. I'd shoot for about 1.1k to 1.5k, but as long as it's under 2k, it shouldn't be a problem. I crank mine up just a hair over 1.1k on cold days and drop it down to like 750 when it's warm. It's an easy adjustment (at least on the stock carb) and between the manual choke and easy-to-adjust idle speed, my crab runs great and it is quite...customizeable on the fly.
Oh, and RTV is a rubbery sealant, basically a heat-resistant caulk, and gas eats it away. Not sure what you're gasket maker is, but that's a common name for RTV. It's handy stuff, just less so around the carb. Due to gas.

[kaymo]

i wasn't trying to be an ass about it, i guess it may have come off that way, but i've learned the hard way not to just take anyone's advice about carbs. your "buddy" if he is your friend, wouldnt pawn off a crappy ford carb on ya. if he gave you that AND paid you 40, then he knew what he was doing. he wanted your carb for a reason. that kind of "friend" i've had and it pisses me off.

captain regular is right. you may be better off driving the truck, but he is also wrong, you CAN do permanent damage to his engine by running that rich for too long. running that rich will clog your cat and once your cat is clogged, you will burn and exhaust valve. i've done it.
also, you are dumping a lot of gas into this engine. more than it was designed to take. if there is alot of gas, (IE: way too big carb) at some point the gas vapor will turn to liquid. liquid doesn't compress, so it will try to go somewhere. more than likely it will try and push through your rings and fuel wash the cyl and you will lose compression.


yes again, captain is right, gas will eat up RTV, but i didnt say to use RTV anywhere gas will get to it.(unless your base plate is that warped)
you can use RTV to fix your carb baseplate if it is leaking. see here http://www.redpepper...showtopic=38676

yes there is coolant running through the intake, but its not "normal" for it to be in there. he didnt say anything about the carb being off for a long time, but looking at his carb baseplate and ford carb baseplate, he has the coolant feeding directly into the intake. a good glob of rtv should fix this, UNDER the honda baseplate, not between it and the ford baseplate.

sorry about the bong comment, since your name is Greenleafer, i just kinda assumed. so are you a gardener or something? lol
i understand that this is an experiment, but you really are doing it backwards. the carb is just to enormous for the engine. if you want to do it backwards the correct way however, then just go buy a turbo and mount it on there. that should make up for the extra gasoline

also i would buy another intake port match the intake holes to match the ford carb baseplate. i would think there is probably enough meat in the factory intake to get the holes out that big. and while you are at it, just cut the intake to allow gas/air to get to the CVCC feed port. well i guess looking at your pics the car