Symptoms:
Car, 1977 Honda Civic HB - EB2 140,000km. Stalling for apparently no reason and running super rich, resulting in terrible fuel mileage.
Faults:
Lack of maintenance. Pure and simple
improperly adjusted carb
burned up points
one non working conensor
Solution:
Step1.
Rebuilt the Carb (OM-2 Keihin) using the haynes manual and a rebuild kit from NAPA (still a normal stock item).
The float level was extremely wrong, almost 1" off so the needle was staying open all the time.. It wasn't threadlocked, so I guess it just rattled loose. The passages were gummed up and there was a small tear in the fuel line that allowed fuel to seep out
. Step 2.
Replaced the flexible fuel lines with 1/4" Neoprene hose and stronger hose clamps. Used a new fuel filter (fairly clean, but may as well do it).
Step 3. Warmed up the car and turned the idle mixture screw to 1.5 turns. that was a bit too low, so I set it at 1.8 turns and that seemed to be good.
I used a buddy's RPM counter (They don't cost much, but I was pretty broke) to get the car sitting around 900RPM ( I have a manual car) at idle.
Step 4. Still had a stalling problem though the carb was a fixed. Seemed to happen at warm up.
Cleaned out the fuel tank cap vents in case it was a pressure buildup thing, but it kept stalling. So on a pretty wild guess, I went for the points/condensor.
Step 5. Followed the points replacement to the letter in the haynes manual. I just took out a feeler guage leaf from my set, and placed the feeler guage leaf in the points and turned the key.. if it let go of the feeler guage leaf it was too wide, so I started wide and worked in (about 3 steps) until it wouldn't release the leaf.. clever or what? The next thing to tackle was the condensor. On this type of distributor, the condensor is on the underside and pretty hard to get at without removing the entire distributor assembly. So I unhooked the old condensor from the removable terminal block, and clipped the end off the wire. Then I scuffed up the resistor cage and mounted the new condensor on the resistor heatsink cage and hooked the input lead in parallel with the points output. I mounted the cap using an M4 screw and a nyloc nut, then covered the resistor cage connection to the condensor with some electrical grease (petroleum jelly).
Opened the points with the ignition in the ON position to make sure there was no spark across the point gap. Nada.. perfect..
Reassembled the distributor and went for a drive. I have a new car.. did about 100km enjoying nice smooth acceleration, so surging or stalling and my gas milage is about 31mpg now. Oh happy day.
Just thought I'd share
-Richard