s13hero

Tach needle jumping around and misfiring, just changed distributor for the same reason, was ok for two days before it started happening again. Unfortunately it's a cardone autozone reman. Car is being towed back to my place, so I'll have to check it later, just wanted to know if anything besides a bad icm/ignitor could cause that. Car in sig.

fcm

Iritic tech movement along with misfiring points to ICM or connections to the ICM. 94

s13hero

Anything else I should be looking out for. Got a new duralast gold distributor, not a reman, still doing it.

s13hero

This is how I'm testing it but the last two steps seem ambiguous. Do I check for voltage on Yel/Grn and then again for voltage on Blu?

oneheadlight

why replace the entire distributor? Why not just replace the ICM/Igniter? All that is in the distributor are the sensors, the coil, and the icm. If the coil and the sensors measure out correctly, but the ICM died.. replace that. That's what I would do.

s13hero

The distributor is under warranty, so it was just an exchange for the whole thing and $30 more for the new unit over the reman. I can't be sure the ICM is bad, that's what I'm trying to find out, but I don't know how to complete steps 5 and 6 in the procedure, I'm unsure as to what I should be testing

oneheadlight

ahh, I see, warranty so the whole thing had to go back. It's most likely your icm/igniter. I just went through the same thing with an aftermarket igniter, left me stranded when it died. The next, new aftermarket distributor I got, I put a honda igniter in! I am so done with this aftermarket junk. No offense to you of course, just venting what happened to me. I had to go with an aftermarket housing since Honda discontinued mine. But I made sure to put all Honda in there, coil, igniter, cap, rotor! People can tell me how great aftermarket is, but when you go through a couple of times of junk parts, the extra money for Honda was worth it to me!

The two steps 5 and 6 are talking simple continuity tests, to make sure the wire isn't broken. Honda's tests are very simple and only test the wiring up to the ICM/igniter, they do not test the igniter only by process of elimination. Which I think is half baked.

I think that they can test igniter units at advance auto, so I heard.

s13hero

Took it to autozone to have them test it, it passed. Not really sure what else it could be from here. Sometimes the tach needle jumps just after running for a few minutes other times it jumps when I'm on the gas then goes back to normal when I'm not revving it. I wish I had a honda icm, I gave up the original distributor 4 years ago for the first reman

oneheadlight

You can always buy an ICM from Honda.. Or you take the icm to advance auto to have it tested again, I never trust anything autozone does. It could be the icm is intermittent in its failure, could be temp related. This is why I gave up on ignition related aftermarket stuff for distributors and paid more for Honda, sick of this lack of reliability. If you can get your distributor from Honda, save the money and do it.

I just looked up yours, you can still get all the components from Honda individually and then assemble them. Up to you.

heres the link:http://www.collegehillshondaparts.co...butor-tec-scat

s13hero

Thanks. Unfortunately no advance by me. I didn't know I could still get an icm though, I knew the housing was discontinued and thought it meant the whole distributor

oneheadlight

nope in that link I sent you the Honda housing is still available! take a look.. It's not cheap but neither is stranded on the side of the road (Like I was recently).

oneheadlight

if you do go with a Honda icm, you will need to apply a thin layer of thermal grease to the back of it between the icm and the metal mounting bracket for heat dissipation. I used MG Chemicals 860 thermal grease. Its able to put up with engine temps!

s13hero

Same situation with me, got stranded on this one. No advance, but I looked it up and it looks like we have some car quests here, same parent company I guess, so if I can make over it there to have them test I will

oneheadlight

yeah I spent the $$ to get the honda icm/igniter and installed it into the aftermarket housing. But you're lucky, that housing is still available from Honda for yours! I know the prices Honda has are crazy. Hopefully this aftermarket housing will keep working, really all it is are the sensors and the rotor shaft!

well keep us posted to what ya find. Carquest might be able to test that for ya. Be interesting to see what they find.

s13hero

I will update the thread, unfortunately I only have this one car, so not sure when I can get over there, that's why I was hoping maybe there ws something else that coudl be causing this but everything I've read seems to indicate the jumping tach needle comes from a bad ICM

oneheadlight

I hear you, I had to rent a car while i was waiting for parts for mine.

But yes the short version is when the ICM starts to go, it can have jumpy tech issues. Mine didn't even do that, it just died and so did the car. At first I thought it was the fuel pump, but after towing it home and diagnosing it, it was the ICM. How did I diagnose it? I had not thrown out the original distributor, it had bad sensors causing the timing to drift over time, but it would at least start the car! I installed the old distributor.

I'll say its a bad ICM, it's probably temp related, get it engine temp hot, and it starts its issues. Cheap components inside! I hope carquest can show you something you can take to Autozone to throw at them, that they were wrong. The other thing to mention, cardone was your brand? yeah I tried them, wow what junk. CAR IS DONE should be their name.

I would not try that brand, maybe try spectra's brand, its what I tried. Much better but still not honda though.

s13hero

Yeah cardone was the first distributor, lasted a few years but I barely drove the car, the next cardone lasted a few days, then I foolishly though I'd have better luck with a new duralast gold, which is where I'm at right now.

s13hero

Just put the ICM back in, drove once around my apartment complex, tach is still jumping around like crazy but the car runs for now.

oneheadlight

Ok the icm you have is from the cardone model or one that came with the new duralast? you should check the wiring from the icm to the wiring harness plug (on the outside of the distributor). See if that wiring is ok, never know. The way I test that would be set the multimeter to the lowest ohms setting and then test the wiring.

I think duralast is actually made by cardone for autozone! Carquest probably can get you the spectra brand, I'd try that one. But as ronJ always says "diagnose, don't guess" or something like that. I would agree, but it is possible that you have gotten one bad one after another. I went through about 4 or 5 in the beginning that were bad right out of the box!

Or forget all this, spend the money, buy all the honda parts (hosing, icm, coil, cap, rotor) and the thermal grease and put it together yourself, and be done with the junk aftermarket distributors!

s13hero

The whole distributor is new not reman (supposedly) duralast gold.

s13hero

Going to attempt this today but how do I know which wire it is in the harness? Also how do I check it as far back as to the cluster?

oneheadlight

Just got to the message now, been a long day.. Well when you look at the wiring for the icm, you just follow that color coded wire up into the plug just outside the distributor. You can test it with continuity or an ohm's test on your multimeter. First select ohms (Omega symbol) and select the lowest setting 20 or 200. Touch the probes together and see what reading you get. If it's digital it might be 0.02 or 0.01. That just shows how little it's off from true 0.0. Then go ahead and touch one side of your probes (doesn't matter with ohms) and the other side to the pin in the distributors plug. If you don't see close to zero there's a break in the wire. The pin in the distributors plug is easy to find, just trace the wire you're on, let's say the black/yellow.. follow it up to the plug and figure out which pin it's connected to. Hope that makes sense.

To check it back to the ECU, will require a long probe wire, lol. And for that continuity checker would be good to make sure there's no break in the line. Continuity adds a little more voltage to the line to check it, where ohms is a much smaller voltage as it's measuring the resistance in the wire, which increases with distance. You could still do a reistance check between the ecu and the distributor, but if you had a break in the wire, you'd get a crazy high reading, otherwise it would be low.

s13hero

I checked continuity through the wire from the harness, just wasn't sure how I could get as far as the cluster. Everything seemed ok, but I switched the distributor at autozone anyway, as they were willing to accept it back on the premise that the tach was jumping. So far, so good, this way I can at least get around, and it'll give me time to grab a distributor from the junkyard so that I have an OEM housing, and then I can have the ICM tested at advance/car quest. I did let them know that if it goes out again, I will be getting a refund. Thanks for the help.

oneheadlight

just to make sure I understand completely. You took the faulty one with the jumpy tach, back to autozone and got another one? And this new one has no jumpy tach and is working well? If so that's awesome!

and when you look for an oem housing, just make sure it doesn't have any red dust around the housing bearing (at the bottom), that's the main bearing dying and shooting out that. Typical of how they die. Another thing is to ohm test the sensors to make sure they're good. But my aftermarket died not because of the sensors but because of the icm inside it. It wasn't a Honda icm. I would be interested to see what car quest finds.

If the new one has no jumpy tach then yeah the other was a bad icm and I was correct in that autozone did not test it correctly! Like their battery load tester, it used to be detailed but now it's a stupid pass/fail device. All it does is look for voltage under 10.5 volts. NO load testing at all! what a joke! Advance auto has the midtronics brand that the dealer uses and gives you a detailed printout of what state/condition the battery is in! MUCH better!

s13hero

Correct, swapped the distributor with them, and now no jumping tach. I'm kind of wondering if I got someone's return last time, it looked pretty clean, but this new one came with a little cover over the shaft and printed instructions sheet, whereas the one I Just returned did not. Didn't get to drive it yesterday, just got the new distributor in and timed it, then revved it up a bit but going to try to drive it over the weekend and see