Hi,

I have a 96 ex that has 180K miles on the engine. I recently had a problem develop where the car was very difficult to start (didn't fire at all) and when it did, it had a bad hesitation problem when I did any more than feather the gas pedal. Stomping on it would make the car feel like the engine was shut off.

After some online research, I decided to replace the ICM (ignitor) and coil. It has a hitachi distributor, newer wires and plugs.

Now the behavior is very different. Starts up like a champ and idles really well... for about a minute. Then all of a sudden it starts to missfire badly. At this point it cannot be driven without a lot of hesitation. After it warms a little (a minute or two) it runs fine and accelerates as good as it ever has. Warm restarts are usually OK. Not sure how it works in warmer weather, but up to 40degress it has run like this.

I have not done much in the way of troubleshooting sensors. I was hoping that someone may have experienced a similar problem.

Thanks for the help.

 

Let's hope that someone has some insight on your problem. I for one have not..Sorry !

Thank You for joining the HAF...

WheelBrokerAng
My Panda Is Not For Sale, Nice Huh?

 

I would replace the distributor cap and rotor, if you don't know when they were replaced.

Is the check engine light turning on when its getting ready to stall? If so, stop by a parts store like autozone and they can read the code(s). Post any on here. The connector is behind the ash tray.

 

Thanks for the responses.

The distributor cap, rotor and wires are new ( 2yrs/20K ) from Honda. Spark plugs were replaced at same time. NKG brand. Fuel filter was replaced also ( that was a chore ). Other than that, should be older parts.

I think it is strange that the problem only exists 1 minute after the car has been running and goes away even before reaching operating temp. Today, when I left work, it was 60 degrees out. The car had been sitting 9 hours. The condition was still there, but much less of an issue that in the morning. I hope with warmer weather the problem goes away for now. I would like to address it just the same.

My engine light comes on from time to time. It comes on for Cat below efficiency. The cat is new aftermarket and the rear O2 sensor was also replaced Denso.

I will see how it starts up tomorrow morning and post

 

This morning the temp was about 40 degrees. The car had the same symptoms. Ran OK for about a minute, then started missing now and then, had one spurt where the idle dropped from 1300 to 1100 then came back up. Within 4 minutes, the idle was perfect.

I did notice that when I tried to clear the winshield, the car missed once. Strange, but I guess this put an immediate load on the electrical system and maybe I have a bad ground somewhere.

Does anybody know where the grounds on an accord are? I need to clean those up and put on dialectric grease.

 

Not dielectric grease. That stuff does NOT conduct electricity.
Clean & sand the connections to bright metal.
For corrosion, you can smear grease all over AFTER it's tightened down.

 

Jim,

thanks for that piece of advice. I had used the grease on spark plug connections and in my home wiring. True that it doesn't conduct electricity well, but is used to eliminate corrosion. I will sand down the connections and then apply grease over them after everything is tightened back down.

Did a quick search online and it appears that there are three grounds, one for the neg battery cable, one for the engine (by the valve cover) and one for the transmission. at least for an '88 I will hunt these down later.

Thanks,

 

Well, I cleaned several grounds and the problem didn't change. It was a total shot in the dark. Some of the factory grounds looked a little suspect. They are typically bolted to painted parts of the body that have weldnuts underneath. I am guessing the ground is from the wire connector, through the bolt washer, the bolt and through the weldnut threads. I took this oppportunity to remove the paint under the ground's connector tighten the screws down again and coat with dielectric grease. The worst of all the grounds I removed was the one from cylinder head to engine mount to chassis. The screw in the chassis had lots of corrosion on the threads and the body underneath the connector was painted.

By the way, how is it that Honda bolts (with the exception of exhaust) always seem to break free without snapping??? I have never seen this in any other older car. I don't even use wd40 before I twist.

I will give it an honest troubleshooting later and hopefully provide some results.

 

Most of the ground wires I've seen are bolted on with star-washers underneath. Those things cut through the paint so make contact with the metal. Still, corrosion doesn't conduct. It's good practice to clean those up when you find they're corroded.

Where you find a corroded wire, be suspicious of similar corrosion between the wire itself & the crimped end-connector.

 

I just wanted to post an update. My cold weather starting problems have returned and this morning i decided to not warm the car up through its normal patch of smooth higher RPM followed by very rough stumbling at a lower RPM to an eventually smooth idle. I just started the car drove 3/4 mile to the higway and when I tried to accelerate on the entrance ramp, the MIL light started blinking and the car started to misfire badly. Engine codes P0301,2,3,4 and P1300 are now stored.

I just took the car on a 300 mile trip and once warm, it runs pretty good and I got around 30MPG. My only other issue is a P0420 that is intermittent and I did notice a small exhaust leak between the header and a-pipe that I have yet to repair. Lots of new parts, including an ignitor(Beck/Arnley I think), but still this lingering issue.

any thoughts would be appreciated