Uncle Ben's

The car is an 05 Accord EX coupe v6 6 speed.

Well, today at the track, I had a problem. No, I didn't pop an axle, or anything like that lol. After I made my first run, I shut her down in the staging lane because there was some oil being cleaned up down the track. After about 15 minutes, I turn the key, and get nothing. No lights on the dash, radio, or anything that requires electiricity comes on. So, being completely embarrassed, the track help assists me in pushing the Accord back to the pit. After messing with the key/ignition for a little bit, I get the interior lights to turn on, but the cluster is all flashing randomly, so I try to turn it over, but all I hear is the starter clicking, not enough juice to turn it. One of the nice guys in the pit working on a first gen Camaro comes over and offers to help. He helped me push the car to pop-start it, and at that point it ran fine. But, the radio wouldn't work, it said "code" so obviously power was completely lost or short circuited at some point. I find the code card and reset it, and next thing I do is look over at the gauge cluster. There was no CEL, no battery light, or anything else pertaining to my car having a problem charging, or running. However, there were a few lights on that didn't make any sense to me. Here are the lights that were solidly showing in the instrument cluster: ABS, TCS, brake(even though the hand brake wasn't on) and the exclamation point that signifies that TCS is turned off. The TCS OFF button didn't change either the TCS light or the exclamation light at all. So, since nobody I talked to had a multimeter at the track, I made one more run and then drove the car home.

It was fine for the first few miles, and I even hit VTEC in first gear to see if it actually works, and it did. But, while cruising, it would randomly shut down for a fraction of a second, and come right back on. By that I don't mean just the engine, I mean the radio and every single light would pop off and then back on again, accompanied by the relays clicking etc. Finally I got home, and while pulling into the garage it kills again. Since the entrance to the garage in on a decent decline, I was able to pop-start it, but when I got it parked and shut it down, the same thing happened again when I tried starting it. The cluster starting flashing randomly, and I couldn't even get the engine to start over. The wire on the alternator is attached fine, and none of the negative or positive wires from the battery look bad at all; there is no corrosion on the terminals.

Here is what I found with the multimeter. The battery puts out 12.7 volts, so the battery is fine. Since the car never actually started dying before this happened, I would assume the alternator is still mechanically good. I couldn't pop-start it by myself so I can't test the alternator output right now.

Edit: the guy who helped me out at the track mentioned that he is a Dodge tech, and that every time a car comes in with the ABS and TCS light on, it's a wheel speed sensor. This doesn't make much sense, only because as far as I know, a bad wheel speed sensor is one of the things that disables VTEC, which was working fine on the way home. Also, I checked the fuses for the TCS, ABS and Ignition and they are all working fine. Since the car sometimes starts rapidly cutting out/starting back up, meaning the interior lights, and the relays click etc. when I turn the key to the 2nd position, and then when I turn it all the way to try to start it, just about every light on the gauge cluster(except the brake light and something else) turns off as well as the interior lights, is the ignition switch toast?

Uncle Ben's

Well, I have some very good news. Not only did the ABS, brake and both TCS lights go away the second time I drove it, but, even though the battery read out 12.7 volts inert, 13.6 volts running and 2.1 amps, I decided to swap it out for my Civic's battery. It started right up, no stalling/killing, and I drove to Autozone where they tested and confirmed that the battery was in fact junk. I'm very happy right now lol, I've never heard of a bad battery putting out the correct amount of amps and volts, and stalling/killing while driving, but you learn something new every day. This wasn't even a Honda battery, how it can be on it's third battery in 36 months, I honestly don't know

msedacca

Same thing happened to me. The battery died then started running for awhile, then had a weird intermittent not wanting to start or not. Turned out my kpro was sucking the juice out of it and making it junk. AAA came out and tested it and told me it was funked. Just because it starts sometimes doesn't mean it works totally correct.

For future reference, your speed sensor is plugged into your transmission and reads the teeth on the 3rd gear with a magnet, not how many times the wheel turns.

Uncle Ben's

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by msedacca &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

For future reference, your speed sensor is plugged into your transmission and reads the teeth on the 3rd gear with a magnet, not how many times the wheel turns.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Cool. When the guy told me about Dodges typically having bad sensors when the two lights came on in the cluster, I got under and looked at the front hub, and I didn't see anything that would be a speed sensor. Now I know why lol, no wonder I can't find anything on searching for speed sensor problems.