1988 Accord idle surge when warm

Mar 22, 2007 5 Replies

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ssateren 19 years ago

Hi. I just purchased an '88 Accord LX Auto yesterday. It sat for 2 years without being started, and I started it up within 30 seconds with a new battery & some gas. 213K miles on the odometer.

It runs great when it's cold. It's got power, starts right up, drives nice. When it's warm, the idle surges between 600RPM [15 seconds] 1500 rpm [15 seconds] and then 2500 rpm [15 seconds]. Then it repeats.

When I give it gas, it bogs down the RPM until it dies. If I press the gas slow enough it will rev up to 3K before it dies.

ONLY when its warm!

Which sensor could be going out? Or is it a gizmo attached to the carburetor? Maybe the radiator was filled without bleeding the air bubble out of it? The guy that owned it knew nothing of mechanics.

I come from a Chevy world, building oldschool V8's. :]

ANY assistance would help! I don't know who to talk to about Honda tech.

Thanks

Sean

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Michael Pardee 19 years ago

A good place to start is to make sure the coolant system is full - no air space in the radiator. If the coolant is low the temperature can't be measured reliably and the engine will surge. Weird, huh? It seems to be a Honda quirk.

Mike

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ssateren 19 years ago

It's absolutely topped-off. I can run it for an hour, get it really hot, and take off the cap some minutes later & it's still absolutely full.

I looked for the ECU to get some error codes from it -but I can't find it.

I looked for the purge valve to bleed the air out of the coolant system - I can't seem to locate that either...

Vacuum lines look well taken care of. Hm.

Think this will pass emissions in Washington state tomorrow?

UPDATE:

It doesn't bog-down when hot. It runs fine when it's hot, but the idle still surges.

Idle will not surge in gear.

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ben 19 years ago

i had something like that on my 87 and it was the some sort of choke issue with the carburator. i forget exactly but it was a relatively minor fix that he jerry- rigged...cheaper than a new carburator

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ssateren 19 years ago

ha.. Thanks, but my choke is working satisfactorily. I've got a nice shop manual now. I've got 30 or so pages that troubleshoot this issue. Sweet, 4 hours of systematic vacuum/power/frequency analyzing. Freakin' Hon-duh.

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Jim Yanik 19 years ago

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:

Newer Honda/Acuras are not so bad;they have EFI and fewer vacuum lines to deal with. No choke,either.

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