Mixtures

[Andrew Fisher]

(When I searched under 'mixture' there were no results at all. I feel like a real old fogey on this site sometimes)

Does anyone have ideal CO/HC/lambda figures and how to adjust the mixture? My car has 0.10 CO at fast idle and 0.11 at slow idle, 120 ppm HC fast and 1.023 lambda fast. Are these figures up the swanee?

Reason for asking is that every 18 months or so my car likes to stall especially when slightly but not fully warmed up. Last time it happened someone kindly suggested plug gap adjustment and I got new plugs on a service and it was OK. Old plugs were rather coked up though and I notice my exhaust is cokey too.

So that's why I wonder if the mixture is set right. (also thought of a temp sensor being in the wrong place or too hot exhaust manifold as it is definitely worse in hot weather)

Idle is also a problem at 6-700 when warm (unless it stalls first!) but I thought of doing the plugs, idle and mix all at once.

Any ideas very gratefully received.

[Adam]

Mine idling like that and it kept getting worse. Eventually it got to 200 and the dizzy died but that wasnt the whole problem.

When I got the new dizzy it went back to about 500 so I took the whole fuel system apart and cleaned it completly out.

Now the revs are great, I have no complaints. Its like a new car.

[Andrew Fisher]

Thank you Adam but just resetting the idle revs using Steve M's excellent 'how to' seems to have given me a new car as well. (Thanks Steve)

(I changed the plugs as well because I'd bought some and if you're going to pull one out and look at it and you've got some new ones you may as well put them all in. The old ones (18 months old nearly) were okay - when I checked the old old cokey ones they were Champions and probably out of spec anyway. And by the way cloth head here found the plate saying 0.2% CO and 100ppm HC under the soundproofing on the 'parcel shelf'. It may be obvious but sometimes the frail need very careful helping.)

I'm pretty annoyed with 'garages' as a result though, for two reasons:

1. My car has always had a very low resting idle. Surely it's not rocket science when you're paying a main dealer a wad of cash for a service for them to look at this kind of thing?

2. Opening up the back flap to do all this stuff I found a rather nice - but placed rather inappropriately you might say - small mole grip resting on part of the engine. This following a main Honda dealer service a couple of months back (it wasn't there before - I look at the engine every six months or so whether I need to or not). I know I should go back and complain and raise hell about this but I just can't be bothered - I won't use them again and that's that.

But the potential implications of this are pretty awful. The nicest outcome is that there would have been a post on here saying 'something fell out of my engine bay and I can't see anything obvious that has dropped off help please!?'. But it could have damaged another car behind if it fell out or got caught up in the alternator / battery or other power connection / brakes to frightening effect.

When I bought my Beat I decided that after many happy, and even more frustrated bruised burnt mangled hours fixing my 'previous car' because of grotty service from garages, I was just going to get it serviced by a main dealer, pay through the nose, but it would all be all right.

Harumph

[Paul w]

Name them and shame them!

I would!

PW

[Andrew Fisher]

Norton Way Honda Letchworth 'Garden City' Hertfordshire.