tuning your car yourself

[One-Way]

^ Should've been driving it all the way to my house.

[1womanARMY]

...

[karoaper]

Once you take care of your spark, problems like that usually have 2 reasons:

1. A bad sensor somewhere
2. Fuel delivery issues

As far as #2, the fuel filter would be #1 suspect as it might hinder fuel delivery.

As far as the sensors, it could be oxygen sensor(s), TPS (throttle position sensor not the TPS report ), or it could be the idle air control valve. One thing you might want to do is to take off the throttle body (where the air enters into the engine) if you can, and spray it down with some sort of carburator or break cleaner spray (available from any auto parts store).

Once you clean those plates and moving parts, put it back together as dirt buildup could make those plates stick.

With an old car like this, O2 sensors could definitely go bad but it usually won't be just idle but missfires accross the band. Then again, I don't even know if a 91 Honda would have an O2 sensor

Hey.
I changed the distributor cap and the rotor. Here's the funny thing. The old wires work better than the new ones. The reason is that the old wires are tapered and widened at the end that goes into the distributor, while the new ones are not. I knows it seems like an irrelevant difference, but the effect is that with the new wires, the car shakes something terrible. I think I might need to buy wires with clamps instead of just shoving it in and hoping for a good connection.

The car though is doing so much better, mostly cause I changed the air-filter lol. Next, I'll change the fuel filter and I bet it'll get even better then.

[adallak]

Re: tuning your car yourself

I've recently started to teach myself how to tune and repair my car myself. It's not a rocket science and I think being able to do small things, like change breaks, flush/replace radiator, etc is a very useful and gratifying skill.

I've got a Honda Accord '91.
I've bought the factory manual from Honda and the Haynes Repair Manual.
So far, I've changed the spark plugs and flushed the radiator. I had no idea how such a small and cheap tune-up as changing the spark plugs can affect the car's performance so much. Next I need to inspect the timing belt and change the idle.

Just wondering if others here tune their own cars. I'm oviously a newbie so it'd be nice if someone here was experienced.

The general rule is that do not fix if it is not broken. Buying FSM from Honda is a right decision. Keep Haynes in the trunk (just in case). For the same reason have some tools in the trunk as well (wrenches, clamps, pliers, screwdrivers etc.)
What is wrong with idle? My plugs were original and still fine at 140.000 miles.
Mine is Cadillac, quite tough to work on, but no mechanic ever touched it. All the problems were diagnosed and fixed by me. A Honda forum will be a great help. That's how I have been learning and teaching others later.

[adallak]

Re: tuning your car yourself

I have a question. My little Honda has a problem with misfiring. The new plugs helped, but everynow and then, the idle drops to extremely low like 400-500 and the engine misfires a lot. Also, sometimes I get this weird thing, where the idle jumps between 1000 and 1500. Weird. I'm thinking the timing belt might need to be changed. I'll also change the plug wires and the distributor. I hope that will help. But any ideas as to what could be the problem would help.

Your car is OBD1 (on-board diagnostics) compatable. You can buy that computer and retrive the trouble codes you certainle have stored. Looks like something is wrong with ISC motor if you have one or throttle position sensor (TPS). Hard to say. The good thing about cadillacs you can diagnose the powertrain and all the other stuff while driving. All the information is available on driver info center.

[adallak]

Re: tuning your car yourself

I drive my car to the dealer ALL BY MYSELF!
(does that count? )

It certainly does! lol dealership-stealership