mark (05/27/82)
I have a 1981 Honda Accord. While it's generally been very good, we've had a very unreproducable problem starting it on cold mornings. It starts fine but runs on 3 cylinders for a few miles until the car warms up. (Symptoms of running on 3 include running very rough, poor accelleration in low gears, etc.) It only happened a dozen or so times all year, mostly on very cold mornings after it had been out all night, although it did happen a couple times in warm weather. We couldn't reproduce it for Honda, who said the car was fine. Recently the suggestion has been made that the problem was in the starting instructions attached to the visor in 1980 and 81 Accords. They tell you to pump the gas pedal twice before starting. The owners manual says once. The claim is that the extra gas gums up the spark plugs and makes the car run rough until it's burned off. Has anyone else had this problem? Since my warranty is about to run out, and I can't really test the hypothesis until next winter, if others have had the same problem it will support the claim. (Is there enough interest in net.auto.honda? I can't believe only Rabbit owners read this stuff.) Mark
brad (05/28/82)
I have a 1982 Honda Accord (not old enough to have a winter on it yet) but have had an 1979 Civic CVCC for 3 previous years. I never noticed the running on 3 cylinders problem. I have a hard time believing that an extra pump on the gas is enough to wet a plug. In cold weather, when gas is so hard to vaporize, it seems even more unlikely. Brad Blasing University Computer Center (U of MN) ...!decvax!pur-ee!minn-ua!brad