Hello, new here and new to Honda. Last week I purchased a 1989 Civic.

When I drove it home last week the idle was slowly hunting around and it stalled on me once. It also sounded like it was pinging on part throttle acceleration.

Today I went and put ten dollars worth of premium in it as it was on E. Immediately the idle smoothed out and it didn't act like it wanted to stall at all. But I still heard some pinging in part throttle acceleration. Also the idle was a little high at 1000rpm. Should be 750. I followed a procedure found on honda-tech to set the idle speed. Which lowered it a little.

I then went about trying to check the timing. I found what I thought was the service connector so the computer wouldn't have control of the timing. Only when I jumped it the check engine light didn't come on like I expected. I went ahead and checked the timing and saw the marks on the pulley about two inches to the right of the pointer. I loosened the distributor and turned it both ways but it did not affect the timing. I tried to put the distributor back where it was. So jumping the service connector didn't do anything and the computer still has control of the timing.

The item circled in black is what I have identified as the the service connector.



What am I doing wrong?

 

Okay, so nobody has ran into this before?

Can someone at least confirm for me that I should get a check engine light with the service plug jumped?

 

sent you a link to factory service manual.
posting it here is a spankable offense and not in a good way lol. 8)

 

Thank you.

I have an FSM on the way. I'm hoping that will shed some light on this issue.

 

Did you solve your idle issue? How? Do you still have the Civic SI?
I am trying to fix a 1989 Civic SI with a high idle and intermittent hunting/surging problem...(possibly two problems). The high idle was after a mechanic changed the distributor.
(I am looking for active posts with these vehicles that involve OEM engines and idle issues... but not finding recents ones. Specifically, I am reading all sorts of contradictory info about temperature control sensors, where they are on my vehicle, which ones also go to the gauge in addition to ECM or may be in separate places... Mine is a 1.6 L FI Canadian assembly one and some things are a little different. Trying to order the right temp sensor (bad idle and temp gauge not reading so figuring mine does both, but I don't see one that does both for sale aftermarket).