1981 Civic Carb/Fuel issue
 

Hey guys! I recently bought a 1981 Honda Civic 1500 DX. It has 50000 original miles on it. Currently it will start and run but tends to die if I put it into gear and put any kind of load on it.
Here is a little bit of backstory...The car has a new stock carb on it. When I went to buy the car it would not run. I think the guys who sold me the car had the vacuum hoses wrong. Either way it would run rough and shoot gas from one of the vacuum outlets into the engine bay. I told the guys I couldn't buy the car unless I was able to test drive it. Two days later I go back and they had rerun the vacuum lines. Now the car was running fine, no gas leaking into the bay, test drove great. Bought the car, drove it home but as I park it I see gas just pouring from the fuel line going to the fuel filter. I fix the fuel line. But the fuel filter then clogs and the car won't run. New filter, new fuel, pump, new plugs and wires new ignition coil, new distributor cap. Basically I did a tune up with everything I could.

Now when I was changing the spark plugs I noticed that the old ones were fouled with gas even though they were relatively new. After tuning and timing everything I got the car running strong again, except it is now leaking gas from the carb again! What gives?!
Did dirty fuel get into the brand new carb and crud it up? Is it too much fuel pressure from the pump? I am going to attempt a carb rebuild in the next few days and hope that fixes the problem. Does anyone have any bright ideas or advice?

Re: 1981 Civic Carb/Fuel issue
 

Sounds like the gas tank might be rusted out, causing your carb problems.

While chinks of rust will get caught in the fuel filter and clog it up, the fine powdered rust (rust dust) can and will get past the fuel filters and into the carb.