Help! First Car And Its F@#ked!

Please Help!!! I just bought a 1989 Honda Prelude. It ran fine for the first hour then started idleing funny. Like coughing n splutterin kind of shit. Well by the time I managed to maneouver it home it had been stalling at every red light and nearly caused a major accident. I dont know what to do, its a public holiday today, and i dont want to ramdomly go to a mechanic as a clueless girl and get ripped off. Im so broke...
PLEASE HELP
WILLING TO BE CAR TRAINED!
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this is my first car... i know nothing about cars... i need help *nods*

Is that all it did. Maybe explain it a little more if you could. A lot of people on AF is really good at things as long as there is enough detail behind it.

its hard to explain cause i dont know terminology...
um, it sounds sound smooth when driving, it sounds disjointed u know? like spluttering but not too bad. on the freeway its fine. the accelerator is touchy ie. if i accidentally put my foot down too hard it just revs really loudly really quickly but takes like awhile to actually pick up any speed, by then ive backed off.
ok the main issue - as im coming to a stop the car gets shaky and chokes up. if i accelerate again its fine but if i have to come to a complete stop it will shudder abit then just die. i have to get out of drive (its auto) turn the car back on while gently accelerating so it catches and throw it straight into drive without braking first then changing gears, doing it sounds terrible. i just had to get it home though. its now sitn outside in the cold :(
if theres anything else u wanna know try be specific cause... well yeah, from my description u can see why! i dont know what im talking about!!!
please help

Is your car carbuerated? If you don't know, take a picture of the engine bay and I can tell you. Our 87 Accord does the same thing. It died at every single stoplight if you stop giving it gas. If your car is carbuerated, then you've got an easy fix ahead of you. Fixing rough idle on a fuel injected model is a bitch, I can tell you right away.

Check your spark plugs too, before you do anything.

its dual-carb i was told. it was worse today. it wouldnt reverse and was blowing alot of smoke out of the back. i checked the spark plugs they looked new.
it seems to do it in the hot daytime weather cause it wasnt doing it when i drove it home the cold night i bought it.

thankyou so much everyone!!

Hmm... I could give you the throttle bolt fix, but I don't think that would do you any good. Bring it into a mechanic, they'll tell you what's up. Most mechanics are pretty straightforward people.

Do come back and update us when you find your problem.

Hmm... I could give you the throttle bolt fix, but I don't think that would do you any good. Bring it into a mechanic, they'll tell you what's up. Most mechanics are pretty straightforward people.

Where I come from, there is a place that only does hondas and acuras. If you could find someplace like that around your area, you'd probably be better off. Just don't let them tell you that you need a million differnt things for your car.

same thing used to happen to my 86 prelude. it would die at every light. turns out it was overheating, so maybe its that. i dunno about the black smoke, maybe your carb needs to be cleaned.

Check the smoke out the back... white?... black?... could be a head gasket if white. Head gasket would cause loss of compression and check your coolant level, coolant will leak into the cylinder and vaporize into steam and come out the tail pipe as "white smoke"... Give the car a tune up. start simple, plugs, wires, distributer and rotor. The idle sounds like a vacuum issue or the high speed idle valve isn't working. Sounds like your transmission is slipping real bad as well, if automatic, check the dip stick with the car idling in park, IF LOW, add automatic trans. fluid through the dip stick hole... DON'T OVERFILL IT! sounds like it just needs some TLC. Try the tune up first... I have a 88 lude and It is fantastic but requires TLC every now and then.

How are you coming along on your lude?...