Ok, this happened several times already and I'm still a car newb so I need some help.

This happened last night:
I was driving and then all of a sudden my tachometer goes crazy. It was at 4k rpms but it drops down to 0, comes back up, an just keeps bouncing up and down. It's a Defi tachometer and it's tapped into the distributor for the tach signal. My tach on the cluster is working fine though. Then the CEL light comes on, I start to lose power. The motor starts behaving very strange and it doesn't sound right. The car starts to slow down by itself. I look in the rear view mirror and I see sparks coming out from the back of the car. I stop, let the car sit for two minutes, I pop open the hood. I smell something burning.

I think it's the distributor but I'm not sure. Can anyone help me?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by THEINTEGRATION &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I look in the rear view mirror and I see sparks coming out from the back of the car</TD></TR></TABLE>

That can't be good. Did you look under the car to make sure nothing was falling off? How did you get home? Did you check the CEL?

 

It was at night so it was dark. I made sure nothing was falling off. I want to get it checked out today and I have a gift card worth $100 in stock acura parts so I sorta want to know what's wrong and just buy whatever parts are needed myself

 

Test the speed sensor maybe?? Anyone?

 

Check the CEL, that will pretty much point you in the right direction.

 

enough oil???...check all connections to the Defi meter??

 

The CEL went off. The car just stated driving like normal after I started it back up like 2 min later. Maybe something to do with the timing? I just don't want something like this happening again.

I don't think it's the oil, but i'll check it right now. I changed my oil like 2k miles ago with mobil 1

 

I thought the CEL had to be reset? My CEL light has never just gone off with out reseting the ECU... Weird.

Possibly a short somewhere. I had a short in my secondary 02 sensor and it would jump the tac all over the place and cause the motor to run really weird.

 

Hmm, that might be it. Nevertheless I'm going to get this fixed today either myself or someone

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by AssPenny &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Possibly a short somewhere. </TD></TR></TABLE>

yeah, with sparks? I'm guessing a major electrical problem, like a metal intake tapping the battery or something near the alternator.

Are you sure about those sparks? If you didn't hear anything weird, then it's not grinding metal, it could be electrical.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Chris F &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> like a metal intake tapping the battery </TD></TR></TABLE>

Oh, I did have this happen once, it was really weird symptoms!

 

I'm just waiting for my friend to come over so he can pick me up while i leave my car at the shop. I checked the distributor, oil, intake already. Nothing seems to be wrong

 

something like this happened on my friend's 90 Civic Si, the cat was cloged and it overheated to the point where it lit some of the undercoating on fire take the cat off and see if you can clearly see light threw it. If not replace it or gut it

 

Maybe distributor fell apart internally.
Common on all hondas with high miles or age.

 

Yeah, I'm considering replacing my dizzy soon. The JDM motor suppposedly only has 38k miles on it

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by THEINTEGRATION &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Yeah, I'm considering replacing my dizzy soon. The
JDM motor suppposedly only has 38k miles on it </TD></TR></TABLE>

Open up the dizzy and take a look, or just take it off and check for play etc

For your new distributor - Distributor King

Even if your CEL goes off, you should still be able to read it, I think its logged.

 

Ok, after 2 days of having my car inspected... The guy finally gives me a call saying thathe's found the problem: I'm using a JDM ECU and it's missing a wire. Holy crap I knew about that in the first place and I wanted him to fix that damn wire and link it up. Complications between attitude and a language barrier made things even worse. First of all the d*ck wants me to pay him $1000 to fix everything. Second of all he refuses to tell me what needs to be fixed unless I paid him. The conversation ended with me being pissed off, cussed him out because he refuses to disclose any information to me and the language barrier isn't helping either, and a disconnected/non-functional tachometer...talk about owned hardcore.

My choices now are to replace all the O2 sensors, check out the cat (no jack available recently), re-wire the tach, and get a new dizzy. Thanks every one H-T

 

check the igniter on your distributor. Happen to my R once