prelude_girl

Hi all,

I'm considering rebuilding the carburetor on my 1982 Prelude. What carburetor kit brands would you recommend I purchase or avoid?

Also, I've heard stories that these are very hard carburetors to properly rebuild but the one carburetor shop I found that would work on it is 90 miles away and would charge me $350 to do it. Is having it rebuilt for me worth considering? E.g. Are there adjustments that I could never get right unless I had the tools and expertise of a professional shop?

Thanks!

Christine

P.S. I do have the experience of having rebuilt a late 60's Ford carb and an early 70's Dodge carb. Is the Keihin very much harder??

LazloZ28

first thing I'd do is get a vacuum pump with guage and start testeing some of the related components. I found a few diaphrams and valves bad on mine, and after alot of searching can find no replacements. If thats the case go with a weber is what I'm hearing, problem with that is removing alot of the stuff may not be an option depending on where the car is registered. What leads you to believe you need to rebuild the carb?

GrumpyOne

The Keihin is a beast but some of the older Honda techs can do a rebuild. One consideration is to switch to a Weber but that may not be feasible if you are still subject to emissions testing.

Also, if you go to National Carburetors, they'll rebuild it for just over $200 w/exchange. Look for the FC caruburetors division.

prelude_girl

Update: I went with a local rebuild shop for my carb. Not being near a big city, "local" is relative and for me is 90 miles away!

After eliminating all non-carburetor potential problems (e.g. ignition and valve timing) and considering the #2 and #3 spark plugs were flooded with gas and #4 nearly so. (i.e. I could pour gas out of them) I decided that there must be a problem with the float for the auxiliary (3rd) barrel of the carb. This was reinforced by the fuel level being higher than then spec. for the aux. fuel bowl.

I decided to go with a local rebuild shop instead of one of the national companies (like National Carburetor) since I would get back my own carburetor and not a carb with a mish-mash of parts from several carbs. I also decided to have the whole carb rebuilt and not just replace the float so that I could have reassurance that as many as possible of the gaskets and parts susceptible to aging issues would be replaced. The carb will also be tested on a flow bench before being returned to me, something I could never do.

I might get it back late this week but more likely sometime next week. Once I get it reinstalled I'll be sure to give a full report!

Thanks for everyone's comments and suggestions.

Christine

prelude_girl

Final Update: In case anyone finds this thread, I thought I'd post a final message with what I found out.

Short answer: The rebuilt carb fixed the problem.

Long answer: The auxiliary fuel bowl inlet valve was probably stuck open. The carb shop guy said it took three different tries with three different floats to get the valve to close. He never could see what it was that was binding. Fortunately he had a proper flow bench that allowed him to pressurize the fuel lines to check. I got a chance to see the innards of another identical carb and I could see that it is very complicated. I am glad I did not attempt the rebuild.

The carb guy showed me all of the worn out parts so I'm glad it had a good going through. As far as he could tell it was the first time the carb had been opened since it was assembled in 1982.

A note on the vacuum lines. I was very glad I took MANY pictures of the vacuum lines that went to the carburetor to help me get them back in the right places. The diagram on the underside of the hood is not good enough to do this. I wish I had one one more thing though. It would have have been easier if I had marked which of the lines I had taken off so that I would have had a check list of the vacuum lines I had to put back on. There were so many that I actually almost forgot a couple of them.

If any of you do what I had to do, be sure to get some golf tees to block off any of the vacuum lines to the air-breather snorkel. When I was checking the mixture settings, not having these lines (2) temporarily plugged made it run very rough.

Lesson learned? Carbs can fail suddenly, not just gradually. Mine did. Before I stopped for 5 minutes to drink my soda it was running fine. When I went to restart, it was barely able to keep itself going.

Now I hope for 30 more years and another 200k miles from the car! ;-)

Best

Christine