FP and carburators...

[Thomas Pyrek]

Yes, I know FP was around when all the cars had carbs, but I'm finding that when I put fuel power in my carburated Hondas I'm getting a negative effect. I was only able to get through just the shock dosage on my Prelude before I decided to put it away to sell it, but a similar, but less seveare thing is happening with my 87 civic (so far I've got about 1000 FP miles on it, with the first 500 being shock dosage). I haven't had this happen to any of the FI cars that I've put it into.

 

[Palut]

My fuel injected '95 Accord ran really rough for the first few tankfuls (about 1000 miles). My theory was that the FP was cleaning the fuel system, putting those contaminants into the fuel stream, and that was causing it to run rough. After awhile, the fuel system got cleaned, the roughness went away, and my mileage went up.

I wonder if since your Civic is so old (what year is the Prelude?), maybe it's taking the FP a bit longer to clean out the fuel system. I bet that the negative effect would be gone after 5000 miles or so.

If your 87 Civic is in the same condition as our 85 Accord, I imagine it would take AT LEAST 5000 miles to clean out!

 

[Thomas Pyrek]

The prelude is an 89 with about 150k on it. It never really ran right while I had it, despite what work I did to it (althoug it does run better).


The civic, all things considered (214,000 miles), runs well. It's just got a little funk that wasn't there originally. Thanks for the heads up, though.


How long did you do shock dosages for? Should I just stay with the normal 1oz per 5 gallon?

 

[Palut]

IIRC, I did the shock dosage for about 1500 miles, just because I wanted to make sure everything was cleaned out. The rough running went away several hundred miles before I went to the normal dosage however.

 

[brian]

Is there any way to visually inspect what is dirty about the fuel system? I have an '88 Accord LX w/ 223Kmi. The fuel filter by the tank appeared original! It was heavy and dark. I replaced both filters and the fuel pump this week. Car is rated at 30/34 and I'm getting 31.6 MPG running 75-80 MPH across TN I-40/I-81 (hilly).

Brian

 

[trynew]

I had an 84 civic for many years, and got to know its idiosyncracies very well. It would not run decently (for any length of time) on any other brand of spark plug than NGK, and I tried more than once. Also, adding Marvel Mystery Oil on a regular basis really made it run better. This was before I knew about Fuel Power, so I don't know if that would have worked even better.

 

[Thomas Pyrek]

I run exclusively NGK copper plugs in all of my vehicles, so that's not the issue.

 

[LarryL]

I have an '84 Civic wagon and use MMO every time it starts smoking on startup, about once a year, now. I'm wondering if FP on a regular basis would be a better way to go?

 

[Palut]

quote:

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Originally posted by LarryL:
I have an '84 Civic wagon and use MMO every time it starts smoking on startup, about once a year, now. I'm wondering if FP on a regular basis would be a better way to go?

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I imagine that if the smoke is due to sticky rings, then something along the lines of a high detergent oil would be more appropriate. I don't believe that FP will do much, if anything, to fix stuck rings.

 

[trynew]

My problem with the Civic was that it would miss on one cylinder while warming up. This problem went on for years. But, when I started adding MMO to the gas on a regular basis, the problem disappeared.

 

[Thomas Pyrek]

well...


Mystery is MMO's middle name.

 

[LarryL]

Palut, the problem with my Civic is valve seals. This regular problem went away for five years or so when I replaced the valve seals. I've had this car for 25 years and the problem has been pretty consistant, except for the period after the seal replacement. MMO cleans up the seals. the rings are fine and the engine has as-new compression in every cylinder. I hit a cycle of smoking with the Civic and tried a dose of FP. I'm going back to MMO. It works, first dose every time. And, this Civic has 375k miles. These cycles, no smoke to smoke were about every 10k miles after 75k miles on Mobil 1, and now with more miles on Red Line they are every 25 to 50k miles. I am going to try FP in one of my newer cars, but I'm not sure of what to expect.