Hi I’m new around here, I just picked up a carbureted vaccum consuming 88 Honda Accord for 1200 dollars and have made it my daily. The first thing is it idles way too high to where I can pretty much let off the brake after holding back all the hps and it’ll manage to make it to 2nd gear without the accelerator. It’ll idle so high in park switching to drive or reverse if I don’t blimp the throttle to bring it to 2k rpm it will slam into gear. That doesn’t happen as often as this strange phenomenon with either the fueling system or the transmission or a combination of fueling issues and vacuum leaks. Alright. The car idles no problem, drives, no problem, no real leaks, no issues, it’s been maintained, every 100,000 miles it’s gotten a timing belt so it’s due for a 2nd. No engine lights! No smoke from the car! No strange smells! All fluids look good. The car at times has issues accelerating so I’ll have to throttle it out and it’s not so bad with the idling issue but giving it gas will stall the car so it’s in and out and it seems to effect the transmission because it has an interesting function where it sub gears? Idk but it’s an active transmission when giving it throttle it will be trying to find a subtle gear for the amount of power so it’s all over the place. I’ve owned a Honda prior to this an 92 accord coupe but it didn’t have the nightmare underneath the hood with vaccum lines running from far to wide so many in fact that have to label them. These seems like a nice car and I’ll get it professionally serviced if I have to but I’d like to know what I can help. Thank y’all for your time.

 

I haven't worked on a carbureted accord, so I don't have specific advice. The transmission likely has only 4 gears, so I'm not sure what you mean by subtle gears.

If you google 1988 accord shop manual pdf, you can find a link to a free pdf of the shop manual. Your car should also have a sticker under the hood showing the vacuum hose numbers and routing. I'd probably go through each vacuum hose and look for rotted/damaged lines and verify the corrrect. Original hoses had their actual number painted/stenciled on them, but you may not have original hoses.