Hello,
I bought a 1998 Accord two weeks ago. When I bought it (from a car dealer friend of my dad's) the check engine light was on. The computer was reading Catalyst not running efficiently or something to that effect. He took it right over to a shop and they said the catalytic converter was absolutely fine. When I came to look/pick up the car he showed me the computer read out, and then we reset the computer. The check engine light came back after around an hour.

After a couple of days I took it in to Auto Zone to talk to a friend that worked there. He said the first thing that he would do is buy a new gas cap, this being a possible cheap fix. After I did that (and reset the computer) the check engine light came on again, this time it lasted a couple days before doing so.

In the mean time I've read on some other message boards a bunch of horror stories about people taking their 98 accords into dealerships, again and again, and them being charged loads of money and the light never staying of for very long. Some of them are so mad they are thinking of a class action law suit against Honda!!

What can I do?? Is there any fix?? The car seems to be running like a top!! Great gas mileage and everything??

Thanks for your help
Joe

 

good luck... im in the same boat as you.

i got the code P0420 everytime i take it to autozone, the first time the guy was like your O2 was bad, so i went to buy a boesh on "however you spell it" but the guy who sold it to me didnt hear me right, and sold me a honda accord 93 version. so the ends where backwards i didnt really care cause i work on wiring all the time and rewire it, "bAD move" the wiring was right my "gas millage" did inprove but i had a new code, the heater cuircut was broken..something like that and the O2 senser "GAVE" me a short somewhere in my system.. then a month later my tranny died.

after a month it was in the shop, i got it back when i looked at the dashboard the light was gone, and i look under the hood my old O2 senser was back on... i was like what the..?
my grand parents give the guy my old parts to put back on.

but a month a later the CEL came back on with the same code, and my gas millage got worst there was SUV's with better gas millagethe me! So i was like im going to buy a "brand" new one from honda...which costed my 175 and installed it... worked great light went "off" then 250 miles later. The light came back on now im PO and wondering what the hell is going on.

Then i took it to autozone "again" and got the same code, and this one guy was like it mieght be a vacumm leak. So he popped the hood and noticed my stock intake had a leak by the line that goes to the valve cover. So i bought some black tape to patch it up for tempary.

It worked!! for like a week or two then the light came back on...
now i noticed when i raved it up 4k in park, when rpms droped down to 700 it would just die. Now im just confused what made it do it. So now I replace the filter i had put on the vavle cover cuz it was black and used up. Once again light went off for like a day or two, then guess what?

it came on again! Now im thinking it my be my stock intake system dieing cuz it had leaks all over. I saved up some cash and buy me a aem sri from this shop in houston which took 2 weeks to get.

I went ahead and put it on monday afternoon.. at first it wasnt as loud as my poor man intake, till the next day when i moved the piping in the right way. Then it sounded nice and it took a bunch of load of my motor.
still till today the light is still "on" but i did notice a big leap in gas millage change.. now i get like 19 mpg insted of 14 mpg.

now im broke and all i have left to change to do is change the cat, and my sticker goes out this month..

the mural of this "ture" story it could be "Anything"

but if i was you cheak you 2nd O2 senser on the cat that meight be your problem.

good luck

 

I'm in the same boat, my problem was solved by buying a new o2 sensor. You can't buy the the bosch or denso ones. For some reason honda's are really sensitive to o2 sensors. I bought a bosch one from pepboys and put it in myself then reset the computer. The light came back, so i went back and got another one from pepboys. I figured out that it's not the o2 sensor that was bad. I did some research and people said that honda's are sensitive to what o2 sensor you use. So i bought one from the dealer which cost an arm and a leg but the problem did go away. You might be able to find a used one at a junk yard. It's a pretty common problems with honda's with ulev.

 

You need a scope to monitor the two O2 Sensors, if the rear O2 Sensor imitates the front, then the CAT is not doing its job. Before testing you need to make sure you have the CAT good and hot, this may mean driving it to the edge in a lower gear to get it up to its operation range so it can burn the CO and HC and convert the NOx so you can pass inspection.

CAT efficiency is monitored by the rear O2 Sensor, the front Sensor has high authority on rich / lean mixture control. It may be bad keeping the mixture rich and the CAT may not be able to clean it up keeping the rear Sensor high or in motion more than it should.

Go OEM only IMHO.

Duane in Japan

 

I can't remember the actual code I was getting on the car, but it wasn't the oxygen sensor code acording to the guy that was helping me use the computer. Any other ideas???

 

Thanks for all your help.
I can't remember the actual code that it gave me, but I don't believe it was the o2 sensor code. (or at least the guy that was helping me with the computer at Autozone said it wasn't. It read that the Catalyst system was running below threshold. He told me to check the gas cap and then you could check a few other things after that if that didn't fix it. I thought that the o2 sensor bad had its own code.

Any ideas??

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Duane_in_Japan &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You need a scope to monitor the two O2 Sensors, if the rear O2 Sensor imitates the front, then the CAT is not doing its job. Before testing you need to make sure you have the CAT good and hot, this may mean driving it to the edge in a lower gear to get it up to its operation range so it can burn the CO and HC and convert the NOx so you can pass inspection.

CAT efficiency is monitored by the rear O2 Sensor, the front Sensor has high authority on rich / lean mixture control. It may be bad keeping the mixture rich and the CAT may not be able to clean it up keeping the rear Sensor high or in motion more than it should.

Go OEM only IMHO.

Duane in Japan</TD></TR></TABLE>

woah, good ******* post! I was reading through the whole topic and was about to post this.