Hi all,

I´m driving a ´92 Accord with a F20A4 engine (european model). I had to replace the engine with a new one of the same type recently because the old had close-to-none compression on one cylinder.
I swapped in the new engine and it started and ran fine.
However i´m having problems now:

When driving some time (about 5 minutes), the rev-counter starts moving randomly. This gets worse the longer i drive, however the engine is running fine at this point (and the revs stay normal, only the counter goes mad).
After some more time the car won´t respond to the throttle anymore. It idles fine, but when i step on the throttle the engine reacts like it doesn´t have ingnition anymore.

I can somehow make it run for a little more if i turn up the heater completely, so i am guessing it is some engine-heat problem. However the water temperature is normal all the time and the cooling fans work fine.
All of the time the Check-engine light is off.

edit: i already replaced the ignition distributor and the spark-plugs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

cya all and thanks

 

Ignition-related problems and rpm gauge erratic suggests ignition coil or ignitor fault. However, I have seen this problem also caused by bad spark plugs and/or spark plug wires. The rpm gauge takes a pulsed voltage signal from the ignitor to drive the gauge. This signal is produced by the coil primary field switching. If the coil is faulty, the signal will be erratic, causing rpm gauge indications.

I'm not sure what coil you have, whether internal to the distributor or external. I would suggest removing coil, and checking the coil primary and secondary resistance against specification for your car. Since problem is intermittent, this may not reveal the problem. Use a high quality, volt-ohm meter to measure coil resistance.

The ignitor can be removed and checked at many auto parts stores in US, hopefully same in Europe. I have found the ignition coil more likely to be the problem.

A good check for your spark plug wires is to spray the wires lightly w/ water from a spray nozzle and start engine at late evening or night. Look for blue sparks jumping to ground from the wires. Any indications require new spark plug wires.

Spark plugs should have been Honda OEM or other OEM quality spark plugs. None of the, dual tips, "split-fires" or other exotic spark plug tip arrangements.

good luck

 

Spark plugs are a good idea, i already exchanged everything else ingition-related (the coil is internal in the distributor i think, so i changed that together with the distributor).

The guy i bought the engine from said he has those quadro-tip plugs in it.. but i forgot about it until right now.

I´m gonna change the plugs, thanks for the hint!

 

That's place to start since it's lowest cost component. Hope this turns out to be the problem.

good luck

 

Would have been too easy

I exchanged the spark-plugs but there´s still the same problem. This time it even occured earlier .. 10-15 seconds after engine start the rev-counter started spinning and about a minute later the engine began jumping and coughing. As before, idle works perfect (even under load, i drove in Gear "2" with idle to the next parking spot), but as soon as i touch the throttle the engine stalls. Funny enough full throttle works fine, but i did´nt want to treat the cold engine like that.

Other ideas guys? I´m going to take some hours tomorrow to check all wires close to the engine, maybe one has lost isolation.

 

I can't be any more specific but I would have to say it is something to do with the distributor. I know they are not cheap but the ignitor may be a relatively low cost replacement. I know the tach will do this if its bad.

good luck

 

Check the ground at the T-stat housing, and take the car back to the engine swapping idiots, and let them know there are problems and you'd like to give them a chance to make it all work correctly.
There is nothing that pisses me of more than shoddy work that drags down the jobprofession of all technicians.

 

First of all thanks for the replies,

lilskul: I already replaced the distributor, so i can rule that out.
hondadude: Um.. i did the swap myself [sm=smiley9.gif] It was either diy or selling the car. For the ground: T-stat is the thermostat, right? Gonna check that, thanks for the idea.

 

Spent the whole day working on the car..

things i exchanged today:
-complete ignition distributor, ignition wires and spark-plugs (again)
-Lambda sensor
-crank-sensor (don´t know how its called in english.. the sensor on the back of the engine below the intake-area)
-fuel injectors
-fuel-supply rail
-all parts of the pgm-fi that where easily accesible

Also sanded all groundwire locations and re-timed the ingition.

I´m really getting out of options here
Things i noticed:

- idle works perfect
- fuel pressure is good
- the engine works better when i force the ecu to go into emergency state by dettaching the lambda-sensor wire
- i get not error codes att all when using the service-connector (apart from a lambda-error after detaching the wire of course..)

I don´t know how to check the generator, but i seems to work as the battery is beeing recharged.

Sorry about the bad english, but it is hard to find a translator for the technical terms. Thanks for helping me guys&girls!

 

Is your coil part of the distributor, or is it separate?

If it is not part of the distributor, try swapping that with a good coil to see if that helps solve your problem.