Kanjo

Got a little bit of a story here, I'd advise a snack or drink before continuing.

SO, I recently bought a 1991 DX Hatch last Sunday, D15B2 with "234K" miles, 5 speed etc. and it started to smoke behind the steering column (coming out from the top). My friend told me it was the ignition but I paid no mind to it.

This morning, I was on my way to school and I turned my windshield wipers on to get rid of the defrosted.. frost so I could see better, and my car dies. So I had to pull off the road, and turn my key all the way off and I restarted the car no problem. So I go to continue onward, turn my turn signal on to merge with traffic and my car dies again.

So for 3 hours I tried to figure out the problem, when I turned the key on my clock and cluster wouldn't turn on (no lights), but still my radio and all lights exterior and interior dome light would work.

Then I tried to start my car, it would crank over once or twice like usual and it'd fire right up. For a second, it wouldn't hold idle and die like I turned the car off myself. No sputtering or any weird activity. Then I tried to hold the key on and keep the starter motor running and the car would start and stay on with throttle response and all, except as soon as I let go of the key it'd turn off.

At this point I proceeded to take the steering column cover off and play with the wiring, just wiggle **** around because I'm 17 and don't know jack, and I noticed my clock and cluster lights would turn on if I held it in a certain place.

So I played with it until all would be on and consistent again like it's not broken, and the car then would act fine. However when I hit my turn signals the car would die and I'd have to re-adjust the wire/plug to then start my car and be on my way again. So all day I'd have to drive like a dick with no turn signal.

And the plug/wiring that I'd play with is all the wires coming right out of the ignition, and then joining up with the wiring from the steering column controls (wipers and turn signals/lights).

What could exactly be the issue? Only my 3rd day owning a Honda again after being with VWs for the past 2 years and I've had a problem everyday. My car started to also miss really bad on Sunday after I bought it, so the distributor and rotor are new (replaced by dealership), and so are the spark plugs and wires. Alternator looks fairly new too, it's very clean.

thanks if you read all my bable. I'm just trying to fix my baby

acmoc

Check your grounding wires.
There's three. ONe at the battery
one on the thermostat and one from the engine to subframe.


Check your fuses and I say pull your turn signal bulbs and look for a short in the wiring

Are there any fraying or loose wires?
There is a relay that controls the turn signals. It might be bad but they are expensive.
So I don't recommend getting that anywhere but a junkyard. But pull it out and see if the other iissues go away (of course, you won;t have signals, but you might have found your problem)