Edison Carasio

My girlfreind's 1990 Civic DX is running like crap. It's a D15B2 with automatic transmission.

A little history is that it has 191,xxx miles and in the past six months we've changed the alternator, spark plugs and wires, and changed out the coil and ignitor in the dizzy for one from another dizzy (used ignitor and coil). New cap and rotor as well.

This past weekend, we changed the timing belt, head gasket and water pump (all OEM Honda parts). After that, it ran as good as gold for about 3 or 4 days. Now today it's stalling.

When you start it up, it starts up and idles perfect. No smoke or anything out the exhaust either. Then when you start driving, it wants to stall and loses power under acceleration.

I checked to make sure all the plug wires were connected, and they were. After that I thought maybe the automatic trans was low on fluid and it was missing it's shifts or something (I don't know much about automatics in these cars). The fluid level was normal, looked healthy (no burnt smell) and no metal flakes in it.

So after that I checked the ECU and it's not throwing any codes (no flashing red light since it's OBD0).

Now when I was checking for bad grounds and stuff, I found something. Wired into the harness for the intake was one of these things:



It was tucked away under the manifold and if I had known it was there I would have told her to not buy the car. I traced the wires into what I think is the IAT and undid the electrical tape and cut the damn thing (it was like a three way split, hard to explain) and taped it back up since I had no heat shrink.

Today I pulled a plug and it didn't look bad and the wires are all in good shape as far as I can tell.

I put the car in neutral and rev'd the **** out of it and it was just fine. It seems to be only under load/while driving.

I can't figure out what else is wrong. Could it be:


IACV stuck or dirty
Coil or ignitor bad
Timing belt off by a tooth or two
Timing is wrong
Fuel injectors clogged or dirty
Bad fuel filter

Any help you guys can provide is appreciated!


EDIT
Thermostat was replaced recently.

Nnovative

So at the same time you took the "performance" box out it started bogging, or it started bogging before you found the box?

AlaskaREX

Sounds like a timing/distributor issue. If it ran good as gold for 3 or 4 days I would recheck the timing and ensure everything was properly tightened. (distributor bolts, etc.)

Edison Carasio

No, I found this while trouble shooting the bogging issue. I removed this and it ran SLIGHTLY better. Or maybe it's just my imagination. But either way, I found that stupid f'ing thing after wards.

AlaskaREX - Thanks, I was thinking the timing but wasn't sure if the timing would just all of a sudden one day be jacked up.

Could it be a possible clogged cat? The honeycomb structure collapsed and causing it to create alot of back pressure into the cylinder head? Any way to check for that besides removing the cat and performing a visual inspection?

AlaskaREX

You just did a lot of work to the car so I would verify that everything was put back together correctly and recheck the timing before I looked at the bogging being a separate issue. Do you have any codes? MAP sensor and throttle angle sensor (TPS) hooked back up and wires look ok? Did you make adjustments to your throttle cable?

Edison Carasio

I'll revisit the timing. Last night I filled the tank up and tossed some fuel injector cleaner in.

Edison Carasio

Bump. Please, any more ideas? I'm at my wits end and am trying to avoid having her send it to a shop.

I tried putting in a diff coil and ignitor, but the coil positive screw is stripped out and the ignitor I got at the junk yard was bad.

90praylude

WHAT DOES THIS CODE MEAN? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_sLIy3T_7Y

Edison Carasio

So I took the cat off, that's not clogged and flowing fine.