mikep_95133

Note: If you want to get to the heart of the matter, skip to my other hard starting thread. It has what I think are the real answers to the engine dying at 2k rpm and then being hard to start. Although the thread below is good reading.

https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...4#post38374854


Hi Gents,

I'm new to Honda's. In fact this Accord I just picked up is my first one ever. Nicely built. There's a bit of a story behind it, so I hope the details won't bore you to tears. I've been a shade tree kind of car nut most of my life. I'm a tech by trade. I have a couple of electric trucks, but need something with longer range to take the place of my gas hog '69 Plymouth wagon. This Accord fits the bill nicely. The last couple of weeks before I posted this message I've been reading through this forum just getting familiar with the quirks that the Accords have.

The post from Jagan'92 in the Prelude forum is going to help a lot when I get to replacing the connecting pipe. I have all of the parts in house as of yesterday. I got the prices from Majestic Honda, and then emailed them to a local Honda dealer and he gave me better prices. Pays to shop around in this economy.

I picked up a great deal on this '91 Accord. $350 including renting a trailer to tow it! 206k miles. It had a lot of work done to it. But it was reported to have water on one of the spark plugs by a local mechanic. So I thought I'd buy it and give it a try.

I filled the radiator with water as it was low. Just as I had read in this forum, the idle surged over about a 1000 rpm range. So I just bled it and it settled right down. That sure seems like a software feature to me. It sure lets you know if the system is not bled.

Right off the bat, something was wrong. The engine didn't overheat. The oil was clear of any water or milkiness. Spark plugs were dry. I took my Bar-84 emissions analyzer, removed the radiator cap, and sniffed the opened radiator neck. There was not a trace of exhaust emissions in the cooling system. Wow. I'm shocked. The previous owner did mention that they JB welded something. I found the water pump connector pipe was the part that had been glued shut. It was rusted through. Hmmm. So I kept on testing. Before I knew it I had driven the car 100 miles. Still no sign of overheating. The temp gauge normally sits about 30% of the way up from stone cold.

I drive this beast everywhere now. So two weeks later (today), I'm headed across town and the temp needle starts to climb. When it hit about 70% up from stone cold, I pulled into a station and poured water on the top tank of the radiator and down the front of it to cool it off faster. I was able to get a little more water into it. Then got to my destination. Thirty minutes later, I added about 1/2 liter of water as the radiator was still low. This has to be the connector pipe leaking. I should have known the radiator was getting low on fluid because yesterday when I got home and shut off the car, the main fan was still running. I've tested that circuit and the fans are working correctly. So the engine was too warm, but not hot. I'll remember that if the fan is running I need to check the coolant level.

Here is what concerns me. On my way down an off ramp this afternoon, the motor died while doing about 25mph and maybe 2k rpm. The temp needle was normal at 30% so it wasn't hot. It restarted and died a couple of times. It got me to a parking spot at Denny's. I went to eat first and let the engine cool down. It restarted, but would die right away. I added some throttle and held the engine to around 2500 rpm. The tach needle was dancing around more than normal. The tach dances around above about 2500 rpm when I'm just cruising down the highway, but with the engine as smooth as glass, until today. While at Denny's the tach would dive down toward zero rpm just a split second before the engine tried to die. Odd. It did this a few times.

So I fired the Accord up, and held the rpm at about 3k for a minute to see if it was maybe fuel starvation of some kind. It stumbled a couple of times. Died once as I tried to leave the parking lot. Now, I've read about the IACV, and in this case the engine was dying from any rpm, not just from idle. My AICV is new and seems to hold the idle reasonably well, although not perfectly. I kept the rev's up to around 2-3k on the way home and made it to the garage. The EGR seems to work according to the posts I've read. But when I apply vacuum to the EGR valve, the engine dies the second ANY vacuum is applied. Not even 1 inch of vacuum can be applied or it kills the engine. Is this normal or perhaps contributing to the engine dying?

So now what? I don't see anything turn up in the search that addresses this engine dying from a higher rpm. The engine runs smooth, but won't stay running.

Here's the last part of my post. The Accord was running so well, I thought this past Sunday night I'd check it for tail pipe emissions before taking it in for a smog test. It was puking emissions like my '69 wagon. I thought maybe that's what happens when a car like this hits 200k miles. From the days I use to manage a shop, one of the things we use to do to help marginal cars pass smog is to do a tuneup and always change the oil. When it came time to swap out the air filter, I found a bit of a surprise under the air filter. Take a look at the link below as words would be a waste.

http://rotordesign.com/accord/ratnest/

The car passed smog with flying colors. Even better than the previous two smog checks. The mileage is even better with the air filter area cleaned out. Shocking.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthly post. I just wanted to show that I had read a lot of posts here before wasting anyone's time. Any help you guys can give would be appreciated.

BTW, the check engine light works, but is never on. Does this mean there are no fault codes stored?

Thanks!

Mike

PS I forgot to mention that I have picked up a 2nd edition '91 Accord service manual. Dang helpful. Amazon had it and several tools, like the radiator pressure test adapter, very cheap.

mikep_95133

This whole weekend I spent getting the rusted out water pump connecting tube and various hoses replaced to cure the leaks. A few notes about the connecting tube install. As Jagan'92's post indicated, put the large hose the on connecting tube before installing the connecting tube. What I had to figure out was how to install it. The tube and hose will go in to place from the bottom of the engine fairly easily. I recommend lubricating the inside of each hose with coolant as it allows easier assembly. Also using a heat gun to warm the hose ends helps them fit over their nipples much easier. The orings on the ends of the connecting pipe should also be coated with coolant so they slip into the water pump and the thermostat housing without binding. Keep the oring bags if you have new o-rings, to cover the ends of the connecting pipe while installing it. This keeps the damp o-rings from gathering crud when snaking it back into place. I did have to wiggle the connecting pipe a lot to get it to seat into the water pump. The other thing is to make sure the clamp is on the hose that comes off of the connecting pipe and also that the angle that the hose leaves the connecting pipe is the same as it was initially so it will route properly to the heater core. Note how the hose is routed around the wiring harness and the intake manifold support bracket.

I didn't replace the hoses that carry coolant to the various emissions valves. But it looks like that's the next step. After making a 20 mile freeway run, the car ran great, but had the EGR hose disconnected and plugged the whole time. The theory being that the stalling the other day at Denny's would be resolved. It was not. Tonight just pulling into the garage the car died repeatedly any time it was near idle. Eventually the car would not start at all. So I'm betting the car will start up in the morning just fine. So I will read over the various threads on removing the IACV, FITV and TB to get ready to tear them down for cleaning and inspection.

Today my truck would not charge. Must be jealous of the time spent with the Honda.


Mike

mikep_95133

The IACV was newish, so it was clean inside. The FITV was not bad actually. It had a bit of carbon coating the screen but not plugging it. So it got rinsed well with carb cleaner. Both were reinstalled with new hoses. Changed the pcv hose as it was fitting poorly and too short. I doubt this will really fix anything, but I had to start somewhere.

Changed both fan belts. The widest one for the AC and alternator, rubbed a slot into the timing belt cover. That's why the alternator belt had badly frayed edges on the inner edge. This new belt is a bit tighter so it should not be hitting the timing cover. Although it sure looks like the timing cover is a bit on the close side to this fan belt.

Pressure checked the cooling system with the car cold. It held pressure nicely at 16psi. So the cooling system should last a while now.

I was thinking of using my battery powered scope to track down the tach signal from the ignitor to see if it has a bad connection somewhere.

I'm going to go test drive the Honda now to see if the hot starting issue reappears. Good thing I bought AAA a couple of days ago.

Mike

mikep_95133

During the test drive I pulled into a parking lot to reconnect the cruise control connector as I had forgotten to hook it back up. The car was a bit harder to start, but still started. Idle has been nice. Maybe even a bit smoother than before the work performed this morning.

The ignition switch is getting worn out. Now it wants to hold the starter on so I have to make sure to rotate it back. I may have to put a new one in at some point.

Mike

PS So far so good. The car ran great all of Sunday afternoon. Smoother idle and didn't die at idle. With the EGR connected there was the same old hesitation or lean spot during warm up from about 1500 to 2500 rpm.

mikep_95133

After reading this article, it explains in more detail that I've found so far, on how the plugged EGR ports over lean only the #1 cylinder and cause poor acceleration.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...5/ai_n8903217/

The article gives other's ideas on how to not actually remove the EGR hole plug, but to just drill and tap it for a small threaded screw. That would make EGR maintenance very easy in deed.

Mike

mikep_95133

I've picked up a reasonable set of tools specifically for the EGR port cleanout job. I'm going to try and do the job without removing any other parts. Should get to it this weekend.

Mike

Blazinmiller

let me know how it works out and what tools you use.

I have to clean out the EGR ports on my 90 here soon.

mikep_95133

I should be able to take pics of the various tools I picked up. Some will need modification. One looks good right off the bat.

Mike

Blazinmiller

How'd it work out?

mikep_95133

I'm working like a dog to get a post made up of what I experienced. So it went well with a couple of small curve *****.

I'll get everything posted in the next few days. It won't be perfect, but it should be helpful.

Mike

PS I just posted my EGR experience under the thread "EGR port cleaning without using carb cleaner" in the 1990-2002 Accord section. Let me know if there are any errors or improvements I can make.

mikep_95133

Alright, so now to get this thread back on topic, I think cleaning the IACV, FITV and doing the egr port clean out fixed this whole issue of the engine dying from 2k rpm. There is still the intermittent surging idle and the intermittent hard starting issues. I suppose those should get a new thread. So, I will post here only if the engine dies again from 2k rpm like it had.

Mike

mikep_95133

I think I found the issue after all.

When the Accord died as I had described early in this thread, it didn't want to restart afterwards. So today I decided to look at the main relay. Wow, what a find!

Here is the thread that I posted all of the pictures under, that clearly show that the main relay could have had the worst case of bad solder ever recorded!!

https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...4#post38374854

Mike

mikep_95133

I might be wrong. Tonight while driving home from seeing X-men, the Accord started to die just as I described in my first post. The tach needle would drop far below the real rpm of the engine and try to die. I kept the engine running by downshifting and dumping the clutch to restart it. Sigh. So with the tach dancing all of the time anyway, it sounds like it's time to replace either the ignitor or maybe the whole distributor. Although this does not rule out that it could be a fuel issue either.

Mike

mikep_95133

The new distributor from Distributor King of Ebay went in this afternoon. So we'll see if the engine feels like dying any more with all of the improvements made (new distributor, resoldered main relay, adjusted FITV). So far it warms up without surging. There have been no more hard starts. And the tach needle is now stable.

Mike