Hi, this will be my first post on this forum.

I recently bought my first car ever (been driving a motorcycle on for the past 12 years and never got a license) a 1991 CRX HF. The engine is all original with 230k miles and seems to run pretty good except that when it is trying to go up hills or under hard or moderate acceleration it seems to sputter and miss. The things I’ve done to it so far are: changed oil, oil filter, air filter, spark plugs and wires (Honda wires), adjusted the valves according the sticker on the bottom of the hood and replaced the distributor cap and rotor (Honda parts). I also bought a new fuel filter but probably won’t be able to install it until tomorrow.

After doing all that I still get the miss and I’m out of ideas. One thing that I thought might be causing the problem is I did a compression check and 3 out four were fine with good compression but number 2 was only about 120-130. I did the check before adjusting the valves and probably won’t be able to do another compression check until tomorrow.

Sometimes the “check engine light” comes on (hasn’t for a few days) and once I checked the code under the carpet and saw a 14. I only saw the 14 code once and haven’t seen it for a while or the check engine light.

Is there something else that might be causing the car to miss? Could the problem be fuel related or do you think it might be the compression.

 

The compression could be a factor I would also check the resistance on the coil. If the coil is going out of range due to heat or age it can cause it to miss a little or a lot usually getting progressively worse but sometimes just being a nuisance.

 

Your talking about the coils on the distributor right? i was looking at the service manual for a 1990 Civic (already ordered a helms manual for the CRX HF) and saw that there is also a coil in the EACV, I'm just making sure it's right but either way I need to pick up a multimeter sometime soon to do some testing.

Could there be anything else I should be looking at? I tried replacing the fuel filter tonight but the bolts were stuck so I'm letting them soak overnight and try to loosen them tomorrow.

 

The coil is inside the distributor. Off hand I can't think of anything other than the low compression but I will think about it and re-read the post see if i can think of anything else from your information.