MadDogExtra

My son drives this car and has this problem intermittently. He reports the car just shutdown immediately, all instrument lights are all on but no ECL displayed. Sometimes he could restart the car immediately, and sometimes it took a while for the car to start. We took it too a friendly repair station and they replaced the ignition coil. They weren't sure it is the problem so they advised us to drive for a while and report back if the condition still persists.

The last time it happens after he pulled into a gas station near our home for refueling, the car just couldn't start. This time, since I get there, I noticed a few things:

1) Key in @ ignition ON, ECL on & then off.
2) Car is cranked normally but just no combustion at all.
3) No ECL.
4) When we tried to push the car, I couldn't manually shift the gear to N position even the key is in @ignition ON. Only sticking a key to a little slot will enable me to manual shift to N position. And yes, I did braked.
5) Then suddenly after we push the car to a corner, the darn thing starts again.

Now I'm driving this car a couple days to check it out and couldn't duplicate the problem. Since I drive with my key so combined with (4) above, I suspect there might be an issue with MY SON's key. It might lost contact with the ignition switch and causes stalling, starting issues as indicated.

Your thoughts?

BTW, I was searching extensively on the web for Honda stalling issues related to main relay, ignition switches etc and I found quite a lot of complains out there.

Updated: It dies on me today. With my key. And I can restart it immediately.

lazlong

Check your grounds. Usually the first to go is the one that goes from the block to the radiator support.

Also, just because the light isn't on doesn't mean it didn't store a code. Go down to Autozone and have them pull the codes for free.

Lost Again

A few things: Next time this happens
1) For the key, watch the green key light.....or swap keys, have both and try again
2)Do you have a test light or volt meter, key to on. Do you have 12v on the blk/yel wire at the dist?

MadDogExtra

Thanks guys for your helps. The car is in the "friendly" shop so my friend can drive around and hopefully it will die on him so he can check it out. I will post the result here so there will be one more answer to the common problem that most of Honda users faced with.

1) Not to doubt your question lazlong but I want to learn. What is the reason behind your advise of checking the grounds. I'm sure there is no code because my friend saying so. He owns the repair station. I'm buying a code scanner so we will see.
2) Lost Again, I will try to remember it next time about the key light. The problem is when it happened to me during a very traffic hour so I just want to get it starting right away (and it did) so I can't do a thing about it. I did tried the "hot start routine" which I ran the car idling at 2500 RPM for 5 min then shut it off. Wait for few minutes to start again but I can't duplicate the stalling.

Lost Again

I understand, a car doing this while on the raod is not a good thing.
1) Not that I can speak for lazlong, but a loose ground connection in the right place can cause loss of power in the wrong place.
2) There are some issues with the key switch (elect part) getting hot and loosing contact, thus shutting the car off....ie, loss of power to the blk/yel in the dist...thus no spark....so to go a bit further, if this happens again (AND IT IS SAFE) do not turn the car off and then back on when checking for voltage on this wire.

MadDogExtra

I took a look at the main relay and it is the cause. See picture hosted at imgaeshack

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...dercrack1.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...lderclean.jpg/

The 1st pic shows a very clear solder cracked line around the pin while the 2nd pic shows a clean solder. This one is the worst one. There are few other pins that show signs of solder fatigue under very high magnification (I used lab equipment at my company) and sooner or later will be cracked.

MadDogExtra

The cracked is at +12V battery feed. See this explanation here (Cracked Solder in Battery Feed)

http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/mainr...mainrelay.html