8th Mar 2010, 21:39

I have the same car I bought off my aunt. She started having the same problem. My uncle rebuilt it (50 bucks for the rebuild kit) and was running fine, but because of his eye sight going, he lost a tiny spring for the idle control adjuster, so if I was you I'd either try one from a junk yard or have someone with good eyes rebuild it for you. Mine stutters and stalls at idle (I need to replace the spring).

Other than that, the car runs awesome, but a brand new carb, just the part, Auto Zone charges from around 280-320, depending on which carb you have, but I highly suggest getting it fixed.

20th Mar 2010, 16:36

I actually just bought my car about a year ago, and the only thing that was wrong with it was the clutch. And when I started it, it wouldn't stay at idle. I replaced the catalytic converter and the carburetor, and still it dies if I'm not on the gas pedal.

I will say this; it might cost a little more to fix a car that will last. In my opinion it's worth every penny.

This car has gotten me from point A to point B just fine. And it really picks up when the rpms are up. It's a great stylish roomy car.

8th Dec 2015, 15:38

The reason it stalls has something to do with either the catalytic converter or the carburetor. If you happen to just run the A/C or heat all the time, or whenever it's not needed, it will stall when the RPM hits 1,000.

I have had mine for about a month and had the same problem as you; go to the store (ex: Walmart) and go to the auto section and look for a bottle of this liquid that should be labeled with all this stuff for helping the car have a smoother feeling. It took about 2 weeks for it to fix the problem to where it doesn’t happen anymore.

Now if your car still stalls as you said, then the problem isn’t the car, it’s how you are starting it. I'll type down a list what to do on cold or hot days, even though this response is 5 years late.

So basically every time you start the car, you have to press the gas pedal down one time as far as it will go and then let go, then turn your car on and it should run good. Hot days, just do the same as I just listed. For cold days, do the same thing, but after you start it, you have to let your car sit there and run for about a minute since it’s an older car; as that minute goes by, you should hear the car rev up and see that the RPM hits about 2K and maybe half way to 3K. When this happens, press the gas pedal once and it should go down to 1K RPM (older cars, when running but not moving or at a stop, sit at 1K RPM instead of newer cars).

Hopefully you'll get my comment, or anyone on this page who has the same problem can read it and use this knowledge toward your Civic.

Sadly I have to sell mine since a dump truck pulled out and hit my left rear quarter panel; the collision repair found a left rear quarter panel, but it would cost $2,500 to fix only that, and the insurance company won't pay for the repairs since it would add up to be $4,000+ to fix the damages that it took. The corrupt insurance company got an estimate for the car, even if it was fixed, and it came out to a disappointing $2,300. My parents fought them and they will now pay me $3,000. When I was told this, I wanted to cry because the car is a classic! I was the 4th owner, and only had 80,546 miles on it when I bought it (garage kept most of its life). It was originally bought in Florida in 1986 at Honda World dealership. Sorry for ramping on about this, but hopefully someone will see this comment and still have the car.