Gas saver

[Jim E]

as though I do not have enough going on what with building a race motor, dabbling in rentals, just bought another one and playing cars in general. So I always wanted a Honda shuttle, think Civic station wagon, little ugly and pretty much no one else seems to want one and there were never many of the things around even when they were new. So my odd ball dream car is a four door wagon with good head room and gets a report 50 mpg on the freeway, I doubt this but the claim was made back in the day if I read the material right and they actually claim over 50, yeah right. Anyway even if it only gets 40 would be nice heck 30 sounds good right now. I had pretty much gave up on finding one of these but on occasion will search the local craigslist and see what cheap junk is for sale and about a month ago up pops a shuttle. Pictures look clean some student has it and got it from Gramps who bought it new. Problem is it spun a cam woodruff key and bent valves, toss in it is a 1985 which has the vacuum line loom from hell to the carb and the kid wants $650. The price and carb are killers I owned a carbed Honda with this set up once before an swore I would never buy another one, think at least 4 hours to pull the carb off and about 50 vacuum lines, night mare! Well I email the seller and the car is still for sale and he lets slip it is in his girlfriends dad's driveway.... we finally talk on the phone... "yes I am interested in the car, let me think about it... weeks go by the kid emails me "you still interested... so I get the number of the guy who is storing the busted Honda to arrange a look see, call the guy "The kid is a pecker head" he says, more or less.... "My wife is having a fit she wants this piece O crap out of the drive way.... hmmmm... I let them stew a while longer and go price some head work. Looked like about $500 in machine work and parts or real easy to get upside down quick. week or so goes by and I come home to find a meassage on the machine. Kid "ummmm you still want the car" I call him and from the sound in his voice he is up against it with the storage issue "Make me an offer... Ok $250. "Sold" he says. By the way the kid is a peckerhead and I have never seen him face to face. The car is from a non-title state and the kid is being wierd about the stereo and paperwork, owners manual. In the end they pull the face plate off the radio, hold the manual and wait to mail me a bill of sale and I pay another $100 to get the radio. So off I go to see the car for the first time and get it towed to the shop. Finally find the house and it is in a big money MacMansion area.... I look it over and the car is much better than I expected, new starter, CV joints, battery and it has two nice options 5 speed and a tach! Guess the ultra rare allwheel drive was to much to hope for but you can dream. So I call triple A and get a tow truck headed my way. This is the middle of the day and I am sitting for about an hour waiting... when up pulls two cop cars.... and the cops are being real careful, one behind the door and one walking up to me with his hand on his gun.... geezzz... cop says "what are you doing here?" waiting for a tow truck I just bought that car. Cop is still pretty twitchy. I put my hands in plain sight.... "I need to see your drivers liesnces" sure no problem.... fork'em over and he backs away to run the check on me. About this time the tow truck arrives few minutes later cop comes back relaxed and says "Sorry but we have had a rash of burlaries in this area and they are reported to be driving a green minivan.... I just happen to be in a green minivan... go figure. So anyway the tow truck drags the car to the shop and I do not get arrested or shot. Actually when I think about it the whole thing is intertwined, I am buying a gas saver because the economy has gone to crap and folks are robbing houses for the same reason, funny really. Well out at the shop I am looking the car over and thinking about pulling the head and an idea pops in my head. Seems in japan for some reason once a car has about 50k miles on it they scrap them and lots of the drive trains end up being shipped here and sold for fairly cheap. Only issue is my new pride and joy requires a older motor and one the ricers do not want so the odds of finding one goes down. My buddy Norman has a couple importers of these motors he deals with and a few phone calls later we locate a under 50k motor for $650 in Atlanta. He somehow manages to buy it for $400 and $90 shipping and it is delevered the next day. Overnight for $90 wild. So these import motors come with a warrenty but it requires you replace a bunch of seals and the timing belt and on a Honda if you put a timing belt on you may as well do the water pump due to how they are configured. Now I am in to about $180 worth of parts plus the motor cost and shipping sneaking up on $700 plus $350 in the car. Well so far I have spent the odd hour here and there getting the replacement motor ready and unbolting the old motor and dreading unhooking the what now looks like 500 vacuum hoses....... how do I get myself in these situations...

 

[Dr.NO 007]

Good writer

You must get hot working on your cars with that black "Darth" helmet on ?
anyway I liked reading your story about the cops, etc.

 

[Ken Ellis]

My Honda Civic "Real Time" 4wd Wagon was one of the best cars I ever owned. That thing would eat exit ramps for lunch, and was pretty much unstoppable. Had the CRX Si engine in it too, if I recall correctly.

Ken in Columbus, where it snows occasionally...

 

[skywords]

I was pulled over many years ago in bizerkley Calif while riding my BMW R90S which was the hottest thing on the road in that day. I had a girl friend on the back and just my luck a bank was just robbed by a couple using a BMW motorcycle for a get away vehicle. Guns drawn and everything. That damn Murphy

Jim I would think about shoehorning one of those fuel efficient Honda engines in the Alpine.

 

[Nickodell]

I was pulled over many years ago in bizerkley Calif while riding my BMW R90S which was the hottest thing on the road in that day. I had a girl friend on the back and just my luck a bank was just robbed by a couple using a BMW motorcycle for a get away vehicle. Guns drawn and everything.

Rick: I have a picture of the whole thing:

 

[Jim E]

Yeah they call this motor a 1500Si is a 12 valve engine but the thing has an extra tiny valve per cylinder not sure what it does at this point.

 

[Bill Blue]

Yeah they call this motor a 1500Si is a 12 valve engine but the thing has an extra tiny valve per cylinder not sure what it does at this point.

Jim, there was an article in Popular Science many years ago about a guy that developed a 3 valve engine. The third valve was very small and carburated, the large valve just sucked air. This allowed for a stratified charge and the ability to run very lean AFR's. I later heard that Honda licensed this system and marketed it under one of their alphabet soup monikers.

Maybe that is what you have.

Bill

 

[65sunbeam]

I got to hear Jim's "I almost got arrested" story in person the other day-man that was funny! Probably not so funny as it was happening though....Eric

 

[Jim E]

Lets just say I had my hands on the top of the steering wheel and a good grip on the seat cushion...

Bill this head has 12 normal valves and four tiny valves.

 

[Bill Blue]

Lets just say I had my hands on the top of the steering wheel and a good grip on the seat cushion...

Bill this head has 12 normal valves and four tiny valves.

A good sphincter muscle can be a very handy thing.

I'd still look for the tiny valve to be separately carburated. Maybe a setup with two valves sucking on a leaned out section of the car and the third one on a separate, rich barrel. And then again, maybe I've slept too many times since I saw this.

Bill

 

[Nickodell]

Jim, there was an article in Popular Science many years ago about a guy that developed a 3 valve engine. The third valve was very small and carburated, the large valve just sucked air. This allowed for a stratified charge and the ability to run very lean AFR's. I later heard that Honda licensed this system and marketed it under one of their alphabet soup monikers.
Bill

Bill, you may be thinking of the Honda CVCC (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) developed in 1970, and marketed in 1972 in their compact car known as the CIVIC (taken from the CVCC initials) in order to meet the anticipated US pollution standards without resorting to catalytic converters. Early attempts to fire lean mixtures, even with mutiple spark plugs, had been unsuccessful due to unstable combustion.

Honda's brilliant solution was tiny third intake valve that allowed a relatively rich mixture into a pre-chamber at the same time that the main inlet valve opened to bring in a lean mixture to the main combustion chamber. When the plug in the pre-chamber fired it sent a jet of flame into the main comb. ch. which fired the lean mixture consistently. Honda licensed the idea to other manufacturers, such as Toyota. Here is the cycle:

 

[Bill Blue]

Bill, you may be thinking of the Honda CVCC (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) developed in 1970, and marketed in 1972 in their compact car known as the CIVIC (taken from the CVCC initials) in order to meet the anticipated US pollution standards without resorting to catalytic converters. Early attempts to fire lean mixtures, even with mutiple spark plugs, had been unsuccessful due to unstable combustion.

Honda's brilliant solution was tiny third intake valve that allowed a relatively rich mixture into a pre-chamber at the same time that the main inlet valve opened to bring in a lean mixture to the main combustion chamber. When the plug in the pre-chamber fired it send a jet of flame into the main comb. ch. which fired the lean mixture consistently. Honda licensed the idea to other manufacturers, such as Toyota. Here is the cycle:

Yep, that's it! Don't remember it having the pre-combustion chamber, though. But hey, that was too long ago.
Bill
Bill

 

[Jim E]

Just got the manual for the car and it is a good one from Honda, wow. They call the tiny valve an auxillary valve.

 

[Bill Blue]

Just checked Wikipedia. The Civic, while introduced in 1972 and supposedly named after the CVCC engine, did not get the engine until 1975. That's curious.

I don't remember when I read the Pop Sci article, but to quote my grandmother when asked when HER grandmother made the trip from Pennsylvania to Indiana in a covered wagon, "It ain't been lately".

Bill

 

[Jim E]

Warning the 1985 civic wagon all wheel drive motor is not the same bellhousing bolt pattern as the 2 wheel drive car.... I now have three Honda motors sitting on the shop floor.... the seller was very nioce and sent another free and paid for the gaskets and seals.... arrrrgggggg

Question. The car has to use a pilot bearing right? well the motors sent to me had no pilot bearing and the motor I pulled out of the car does not have one and... the one listed at the parts houses in no way will fit. Plus the input shaft where the pilot rides is smaller in diameter than the hole in the flywheel.

 

[Jim E]

Called Honda parts and they say there is no pilot bearing on this model

 

[skywords]

Jim is this the dreaded vacumm line boondogle? Oh My

 

[Jim E]

Yeah is that a joy or what! The manual basically said to unbolt all the crap that the lines attach to and lay it on the engine when you pull it, so that is what I did.... The intake with the carb and all the lines and box gizmos is about as heavy as the block.... I owned an Accord with this same set up at one time and the carb had a problem so I ended up getting a carb out of a junk yard. The donor car had been smacked hard in the rear end and I figured the carb might be good. Well it took about two hours to pull the carb off the donor car and that was with cutting vacuum lines, when it came to taking the carb off the accord and putting the replacement on it took 8 hours. Then the thing did not run right and I figured out what was wrong with the old carb.... the old man who owned it had never got into the secondary and the throttle shaft was just gummed up.... arrrggggg... so I cleaned it and did the swap dance all over and it was fine.

What I want to know is how in the world can all that stuff work? how in the heck does it take a million vacuum lines to make a carb work? how many coctail napkins did it take to come up with this set up....

Oh and not sure I mentioned it but a week ago I replaced an intake gasket on a Nissan Altima.... 15 hours it took.... gasket was six bucks. After the first 6 hours I thought it was not posible to remove the intake with the motor in the car..... but I carried on and managed it. By the way this was a 2001 Nissan and when I googled it and it seems this is a common problem for this year model car... the person I did the job for was family so I did it for free... she had priced the job and they wanted $400 to do it.... after about the 8th hour I was ready to pay the money to get out of doing the job...

Here is my morning..... my luck is on a down turn it seems.... had a flat on my van pulled the tire went to the tire store "this tire is plugged we cannot fix it.... went home van had fallen off the jack... took care of that... figure would just put the doughnut on.... the let down winder is frozen..... bought a plug kit.... tire had a scew and two staples in it..... oh well so it goes...

Rubies fair and agony on me deep dark depression excessive misury if it wernt for bad luck I'd have no luck at all

 

[skywords]

Jim that just reaffirms my rule of never buy a car newer than 1967. Our 2000 van is getting tired. I am probably going to replace it with a 1960's restored vintage Volvo wagon. Two count it two vacuum lines, advance and brake servo. I can handle that. My 1982 Ford F-100 had a similar vacuum cluster and I ripped it all out, funny runs great. I am not in the smog zone so I can do that. When they zone us for smog I'll give it to Junk For Jesus and buy a 1960's truck.

 

[Nickodell]

Here is my morning..... my luck is on a down turn it seems.... had a flat on my van pulled the tire went to the tire store "this tire is plugged we cannot fix it.... went home van had fallen off the jack... took care of that... figure would just put the doughnut on.... the let down winder is frozen..... bought a plug kit.... tire had a scew and two staples in it..... oh well so it goes...

Jim, I don't have much luck with tires, either. Four years ago I put two new Pirelli P600 tires on the rear my Jag XJ6. $230 each. A few weeks later it went in for the annual state inspection, and the mechanic said "I'll have to fail it. That right rear is worn almost down to the cords." Impossible, I said. The rears only have about 2,000 miles on them. Sure enough, when I looked at the right rear tire, the left side was worn down past the treads.

I had had this happen a couple of times in the past, and the Goodyear and Firestone dealers replaced the tires at no charge. One of them showed me the offending tire sectioned through, and pointed out the belt that was not central, but shifted to one side. It is, apparently, a not uncommon manufacturing defect when the machine operator allows the belt to shift.

A phone call to Pirelli resulted in the advice to take the car to the nearest Pirelli dealer and have the tire replaced, then they could look at the offending one to see if it was a manufacturing defect. Did that.

When I went back to the dealer a couple of days later, expecting them to also have my tire sectioned, they claimed to have no idea what I was talking about, and that the old tire had been junked. A call to Pirelli was useless: "We have no control over our dealers, who are independent operators." So my two tires ended up costing $690. Guess who will never buy Pirelli again?

A couple of months ago I had a flat in the left front of my Camry. Placed the jack at a point where I thought the handbook illustrated, but obviously I was wrong as when I jacked the car up, unknown to me, I started distorting the metal under the fender. After lowering the car I saw that the Toyota's legendary "fit and finish" was all wrong - the left front fender and door are now obviously misaligned. Body shop estimate to remove and straighten: $320.

Bugger.