My '88 Civic (base model hatch, 4mt, 1.5L fuel injected) has had an intermittant starting problem for the past year. Sometimes, mainly after its been brought to operating temp, and shut down, it is hard to get re-started until it sits for a few minutes. The strange thing is that this problem is generally unpredictable; it usually fires up with no prob, but one out of 10 times, it'll give me problems.

However, if the car is stalled, it almost always is hard to restart. I discovered this when I let my cousin learn stick on it the other day. Any time he stalled, the car usually gave us trouble getting re-started.

In the past, these "hard start moments" would take 5 to 10 attempts to start the car before she fired up, and all was well. However, today was a different story. I drove the car in the morning, had no issues, returned home, and an hour later went outside to leave for work. Strangely, the car refused to start. I attempted 25+ times to start it. Tried again tonight. All she does is crank until the check engine light comes on.

The light is the same code that it has always been over the past year, code 16, which off the top of my head, is "Fuel injection/injector system"

I know these cars have main relay issues, so I purchased a new one from Napa (part #: AR726) over a year ago, and I plan to install it tomorrow to see if that could be the problem.

So basically, I'm looking for other ideas/experiences that might help me get this problem fixed. The car is great in every other way. The strange thing is that whatever this problem is, it does not seem to affect the drivability once the car is started. It only makes it hard to get the car to kick over. The car does suffer from an irregular idle, but I think that's just the fast idle valve, which is a whole different issue on these cars. Also, it has no muffler, although I don't think this could affect the "fuel injection system" in any adverse way.

Thanks in advance for your insight.

Mark

 

you've already answered your question in the post. Change the main relay.

 

main relay

 

You can also desolder/resolder the main relay. I resoldered my relay 18 months ago and it still works perfectly.