Hey everybody, in need of a daily driver I just bought a 2003 Honda Accord. This thing is a rare little gem, factory navigation, heated leather seats, sunroof 4 cylinder stick shift car. The car is in great condition and I got it cheap with very high miles (250,000), but hell, it ran and drove great, and its a Honda. I was driving to work, very low on gas and the car went into limp mode. I thought it was running out of gas at the time because it was that low, rolled into a gas station and filled up. The car ran and drove great. One day later, I whipped a pretty hard U-turn (with a full tank of gas) and the car went into limp mode (I assume). She wouldn't go past 3,000 / 3,500 RPM and bounced back like it was hitting the rev limiter. I limpted it home and restarted it. The problem went away (for now).

Plugged a code scanner in and behold 3 engine codes (I guess the previous owner was nice enough to pull out the check engine light bulb from behind the dash) My codes are as followed p0420, p2646, p2647. I only bought the car two days ago, and just got it registered today. I know its probably a bad idea, but I'm going to take it to work tomorrow anyway. My first course of action is going to be tapping the catalytic converter with a rubber hammer (i believe that I will hear rattles, and I believe I will more then likely end up replacing the cat), I am also going to test the OHMs on the vtech oil pressure switch to confirm that thing isn't fried. While I'm poking around I plan on removing the housing that the vtech oil pressure switch goes into, from what I understand there is a screen in there that could get clogged, and also I read about a second oil screen that is located somewhat behind the belt tensioner and power steering pump.

So to recap: I plan on banging on the cat, testing the ohms on the vtech oil pressure switch and cleaning two oil screens. How's that sound?

 

Having both P2646 & P2647 suggests an intermittent fault. First step is to reset and see what comes back. Here are tests from manual.

P0420 plan is sound, if damage is extensive but it is possible the converter is simply not functioning. Here monitoring the aft-cat O2 sensor voltage is necessary to confirm non-functioning converter. A rapidly oscillating voltage from 0.1-0.9 or thereabouts is an indicator of non-functioning converter.

good luck

 

Relax bro, your very impatient. Limp mode is 2-2500k, 5,000 rpm is not limp mode. Bring it to a mechanic, or just drive it. Why are you trying to push the redline every shift anyway? As to my original post, embarrassingly enough the oil was low two quarts because it burns oil very quickly. She needs a motor, luckily I have a long weekend and another vehicle to drive. At 256,000 miles I suppose it’s earned.