rkrone

my friend has a 96 civic D16, said they got a rough idle when they stop at a light, then it comes and goes
i haven't seen the car in a while, but i changed the air filter, plugs, and oil a few months ago
a CEL came on too, car still runs, but they don't know what to do (and i haven't personally seen it for a while)
what are the basic things to check for somone with limited car skills before taking it to a stealership?

thanks in advance

ifIexplode

Explain to them how to jump the ECU to see what code it is throwing, Or have them take it to Advance auto, they will do it for free. Sound like it may be misfiring

yairsaenz83

You can take to Autozone too, they do the check engine test for free as well. Could be that one of the two oxygen sensors is bad or a vaccum leak.

Preferio

There are a thousand things that could be wrong. We'd have to know what DTC you got, then diagnose from there, because it's now always exactly what the code says it is. More than likely, o2 sensor, but need the DTC.

93eg2james

Yeah deffinitly need somemore info to make any type of conclusion at this point. If I had to guess, it would be the IACV is clogged/dead or the car is out-of-time. I've had this problem a few times before, and everytime it turned out to be either of the two I mentioned.

Please get more info though. Tell us what code it is

1fastEK9

take it 2 a shop

Preferio

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 1fastEK9 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">take it 2 a shop </TD></TR></TABLE> If you can drive it to a location that can scan it for free, depending on what code you get, make the decision to take it to a shop after that. If it's an 02 code or a misfire code, then it's pretty much straight forward, and is easy to repair with little chance it actually being some other problem. However, if it comes up with something along the lines of an evaporative leak, then take it to a shop where they can accurately diagnose the problem, because that could be a lot of different things, that you will most likely not be able to quickly identify without a high end scan tool.

93eg2james

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by rkrone &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">my friend has a 96 civic D16, said they got a rough idle when they stop at a light, then it comes and goes
i haven't seen the car in a while, but i changed the air filter, plugs, and oil a few months ago
a CEL came on too, car still runs, but they don't know what to do (and i haven't personally seen it for a while)
what are the basic things to check for somone with limited car skills before taking it to a stealership?

thanks in advance</TD></TR></TABLE>

Milage? Do you know the last time the T-belt was done? When you did the spark plugs ect, did you do a cap and rotor?

PICAR20

take out the 2 screws on the idle control valve and clean the 2 screen hole with carb cleaner.

rkrone

just spray carb cleaner where the sensor goes into? (not the actual sensor)

Preferio

Don't listen to people telling you to just pull off certain parts and do this and that. Diagnose it first. This isn't a hard thing to do in this situation, considering you have a CEL on. I could just start telling you a bunch of stuff to do, that would just waste your time because there are a thousand different things that could cause this.