I'm in desperate need of advice with my 2003 Honda Accord EX Coupe 4cyl. I bought it at an auction as a flood car. I know what your going to say but my father and brother are mechanics and have bought and fixed up several flood cars before. They checked the water level and all the fluids and everything looked ok. The car wouldn't start and we thought it was the immobilizer system keeping the keys from working. Took it in to a Honda dealership and they found the PCM was fried. I found a used one at a junk yard and brought it to them. They plugged it in, it worked, and they programmed the keys. Car still wouldn't start. They got it started when they replaced the fuses for the coil packs then they said it was giving them a map sensor code and they needed to replace that. Replaced that and now they say it's giving them two codes one for the baro sensor circuit and another related to the baro sensor. They think the PCM I gave them is bad and they want to order a new one and charge me 500 bucks for it. If it fixes it then fine, but if it doesn't, they won’t take the new PCM back, and I'm out 500 bucks. More actually because I already own 345.00 in labor. Would a bad PCM give random codes like that? I don’t think it's a bad PCM. I'm not an expert in circuit boards but if you open that metal box called the PCM it's only one part. A circuit board connected to a plug. I've worked in computers for over 10 years and I know that 9 times out of 10 if one part of a circuit board is bad then the whole thing fails. Half or part of the board can't be destroyed and the other parts work ok. Honda is also saying that I can’t drive the thing out of there because it won’t go over 3000 rpms. I'm thinking of towing it to a very good mechanic who could help me out. He can’t do the PCM if it's bad, I would have to tow it back to Honda in order for that to be fixed. Please help if you have any ideas.

Thanks

Joshua

 

Honda's, if there is one word to discribe them is Releys, Relays, Relays. The Japanees love to use relays, switches and modules and they design wonderfully complex electrical systems The second thing they love are computers, and they'll use them everwhere they can; and all this is what makes them probably the worst car out there if you inadvertantly buy a flood car.
Fresh water may buy you some time to use it, but salt water is hideous and very corrosive.
I envision that if you insist on keeping it, you will eventually replace every electrical component in it, not just those that submerged (it's the humidity too)
Every Relay
Every Switch
Every Module
Every Computer
...and then the simpler things like connections and sockets will start going.

In all honesty, the cars paperwork should have read "Salvage" as opposed to "Flood"

sorry

P

 

hey man did you buy that car at DAY's auto auction? the car wont go over 3,000 rpms because its in limp mode. there is a really good honda repair shop out in lithia springs (at the intersection of thornton road and bankhead hwy) its called hondaville...look them up in the yellow pages...before i started doing my own work they would do all the work on my car and they have worked on all my parents hondas and other cars in the past. they won't rip you off and have pretty good prices

 

Thanks for your reply. We knew the car was flood salvage but I bought it on the advice of my Father and Brother because they looked at the water line and it came up to about the seats. You can tell because of the red Georgia clay. the engine looked clean. The fluids were clean, and the water was fresh, not salt. I'm hoping that the at least the PCM is good. I need to get the thing drivable at least. I want to keep the car, I only paid 10k for it. If it will never be the same then I will try to sell it for the amount of the loan. Of course I wont try to hide the fact that it is flood. I've sold salvage cars before, and made sure that the buyers knew the history of the car. I really want to keep the car though.

 

What does limp mode mean?

Thanks

 

limp mode is basically like safe mode on the ECU. it limits everything and makes the car run like ***. if you clear all the codes and reset it.

 

Brad

I did some research and found out that a bad or unplugged baro sensor will cause the car to go into "limp" mode. The techs at Honda dont even know that. They only know what codes it's giving them. I honestly think they dont know how to fix the thing, they will just keep replacing parts and charging labor.

 

is your car at hennessy honda? or at ed voyles?

take the car to hondaville. you won't be disappointed.

 

Brad

It's at Hennessy Honda. Do they have a bad rep?

Thanks

 

i haven't heard anything bad about them, but i would rather have honda-ville do all my work than them. hennessy honda is right down the road from my house. you could always borrow a scanner from someone and take a day to fix the car in the home depot parking lot right next door. that way you only have to drive it about 50 feet in limp mode.

 

the baro sensor is located inside the ecu or pcm...i would try another ecu if possible...but about the one piece of the circuit board being out and everything should not work at all.....
my friends car had wiring problems and he would actually burn up the circuit board in a certain spot - it happened a few times, a resistor or something, but his car would run except it was in limp mode.....finally we just ran a jumper wire on it and it ran normal again...