All fingers are pointing to the spark plug change. I adjustment my valves and changed the sparkplugs tonight.

Started her up and, wonderful, the car is noticeably quieter now that the valve clearances are proper. They sure do loosen up over time.

I take it out for a test drive and I'm easy on it until it warms up. The first stop I make I push the clutch in and let it coast to a stop. Before I'm completely stopped the idles dropped and the car dies.

I start it up and notice it has a hard time starting, but it finally does. Give it a few revs and drive around...same problem, if I let the revs fall to about idle, it wants to stall. Finally it's able to hold and idle, but whenever I blip the gas, at first it drops down to about 3-400, but shoots up like it's supposed to.

Can't say for sure, but the car may be weaker. Which is odd since it's nice and cool outside and the car doesn't feel stronger. Tomorrow I'm going to throw the old plugs back in and see what's up.

 

Plug wire not pushed down tight...or maybe a vacuum leak if you knocked a vac hose loose.

 

I'll keep that in mind when I look it over today. But it wouldn't make sense if it's not missing or stumbling.

thanks

 

Re-check your adjustments on the valves..
I say this because if it were a spark plug problem should notice a "dead" cylinder by the quality of idle.. Honda motors can run fairly stable without stalling on 2 cylinders, may idle like **** but it will run and get up and go when you put your foot into it without stalling..

 

Also check the gap on your new plugs.

 

That is a good idea.

 

Breakstuff...you are a smart man.

I threw the stock plugs back in just to make sure, same problem.

I have good theory on this one and I can't prove it until I go back and work on the car. I may have set the clearances too tight. For example, within spec is from .006" - .008" for one side. I set it at .006" which is well within spec.

But one thing that the FSM says is that if the clearances are correct, there will be slight drag on the feeler gauge, and the next larger gauge will not fit. When following those directions, allowing slight drag at .006", .008" would still slide in, but with some effort (I'm not forcing it in though). So I went ahead and adjusted it so that the out of spec gauges would not slide through.

I guess this is too tight. I know everything else is correct as far as TDC for all 4 cylinders. That was something I double, triple, and quadruple checked. The car is actually pretty quiet, no more of that sewing machine ticking anymore. I drove it around today...it doesn't want to stall out as easily anymore. Maybe it loosened up a tad. I can't get it to stall anymore, which is better.

My question is, how do the clearances affect the valve? Smaller clearances mean that the valves open up sooner, and slightly more or would it be the opposite?

thanks for reading!

BTW, LOL Teken. If I switched my plug wires, I wouldn't have told anybody.

Besides, that would pretty bad for the motor....having cylinders fire at very inappropriate times.


[Modified by Jesse H, 6:58 PM 10/27/2001]