I drive a '92 SI that is pretty much stock. Lately I have noticed the car to be sort of stumbling at cruising speeds.(70-75mph) It is very faint , almost like a gust of wind slowed the car down.(which it's not) It's almost as if the car loses power for a split second.(engine not electrical) I did the plugs/cap/rotor/and wires about 3 months ago. Well lately they seemed to be more frequent , and today I went to the bank and when I got back in my car , I started it and it atalled right away. It was then difficult to start. As I was pulling out of the bank it stalled again , luckily it started quickly this time. But I seemed to have to keep the revs up to keep it going. On my trip home it stumbled about 3 times , very little stumbles. Any suggestions? I'm gonna take a look at the cap and what not tommorrow. I need to keep this Civic going until I get my back up '95 Coupe EX going. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Ok. The car finally **** the bed on my way home today. I checked for spark finally , and it all seems to be good. I do not however hear the fuel pump running after it primes. So this leads me to believe it is either the pump itself and/or the main pump relay. I will be checking both of those this afternoon. I will keep my progress going on here just for the reason of others who might have this problem and need to search. I should of started checking on this when it was stumbling while driving. This way I wouldn't of had to pay $125 for a tow. Preventive maintenance is a wonderful thing.

 

Now I just took the Primary Fuel pump relay out of my '95 EX. (Which runs) It made no difference. The car although started when I first went out to work on it. The fuel pump seems to be fine. It is running while the car is running. But the odd thing is , that it stalls right away. And when I go to give it gas , that is when it has an opposite effect and goes to stall out , but will rev up sometimes. And it willl run for a while if I leave it alone. But soon as I go to give it gas , it dies out. I'm gonna try taking the ignition coil out of the '95 EX and see if that makes a difference. Anybody with an answer , please help.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by omega02379 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">And when I go to give it gas , that is when it has an opposite effect and goes to stall out</TD></TR></TABLE>

02 sensor, tps maybe

 

Well that made no difference either.


<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 90blackcrx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

tps maybe</TD></TR></TABLE>
I was thinking this as well , but now I'm leaning towards the ICM. (Ignition Control Module) Gonna try taking that out of the other car now.

 

Check your fuel filter. Do you know if it's the spark that's cutting out, or the fuel? Are your plugs properly gapped? It may sound kind of dumb, but make sure your air filter is clean.

 

Yeah , the air filter is brand new (2 months) and I just put new plugs in at a gap of .44 . I'm leaning back towards the spark cutting out. Because it is intermitent. I'm thinking of just swapping out distributors.(instead of all the parts) The one on the parts car looks newer. Or , does anybody know how to get the ICM out?

Edit: Fuel filter is only 3 months old as well.

 

Take off the distributor cap and you will see the ICM. It has wires connected to it with quick slides. It's held on with 2 or 3 philips screws. You should also get an ohmmeter and make sure your coil is in specs.

 

I see the ICM , but the phillips screws are down IN the dizzy. How do I get a screwdriver in there? It looks like it should just slide out. I'm headed out to just swap out dizzy's. Wish me luck.

 

Just pop off the rotor and dust shield, you should be able to get it. Good luck. Hope swapping them works.

 

Coil issues are common with this vehicle, you will still have spark but it will be weak. I'd start there. Good luck.

 

O.k. I swapped dizzi's. It fires a **** load faster , but nothing. Still dies out. The inside of the dizzy from the parts car looks a ton cleaner and newer compared to the one I drive. How would I know if I had the dizzy 180 degrees out? I tried to keep them lined up exactly. BTW , Thanks to everybody now!

 

check the injectors. youre wiring could be cutting out.

 

O.k. Here's the deal. My Father and I have been playing with it for hours. We have fuel , spark , and obviously air. But the funny thing is when we advance the dizzy past where you usually can , it starts now but still dies out. All the timing marks line up on the crank shaft end. We are now gonna go check the timing with an actual timing light.

 

We just checked with the timing light and all is good there. But it still seems the timing is retarded. But when we take all the bolts out of the dizzy and advance it past what is possible , it starts , and dies out. WTF?!?!

 

do a compression test!

 

check those plugs, plug wires, dizzy cap and rotor button!

 

im kinda thinking fuel pump. sometimes they work for awhile and then quit and then work again when they go bad.

do you have a guage to see if the pressure drops off right before it dies?

however, if it were the fuel pump not providing enough fuel then it would respond better to less timing not more.

might want to verify camshaft timing too, to make sure the belt didnt jump or something.

hopefully its something simple

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by smokey2.0 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">do a compression test!</TD></TR></TABLE>
190lbs across the board

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Black R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">check those plugs, plug wires, dizzy cap and rotor button!</TD></TR></TABLE>
Plugs are good , plug wires are litterally brand new , and the dizzy I put on is pretty new as well. Although the plugs got carbon covered quickly , which lead me to believe the gas isn't getting burned thouroughly.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Rosko &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">im kinda thinking fuel pump. sometimes they work for awhile and then quit and then work again when they go bad.
do you have a guage to see if the pressure drops off right before it dies?

however, if it were the fuel pump not providing enough fuel then it would respond better to less timing not more.

might want to verify camshaft timing too, to make sure the belt didnt jump or something.

hopefully its something simple</TD></TR></TABLE>
That's what I thought at first too. But the voltage never drops at the pump or the relay. Stays perfect all the way till just after it dies. As far as the timing goes , we checked it and everything lines up perfect on the crank side. And the dizzy side is arbitrary cuz it will either be right on or 180 degrees out. In which case it wouldn't start at all. It would pop back through the intake track.


So , I am now gonna go play with the MAP sensor. We have good spark , plenty of gas , all that's left is the air side of the equation. The funny thing is that I'm still not getting any CEL codes. So it's has to be something stupid and not a major part. We'll see how it goes today.

 

i would check your internal coil i had the same problem

 

Coil.

 

So it will crank and idle fine but when you touch the gas, it dies out?

Pop the cat off the header and try again, when cats get a lot of miles on them, they start to clog up gradually and you don't notice at first. Then it does exactly this and you are at a total loss. It happens fast and to quite a few people.

 

ignitor

 

O.k. I'm putting my flame suit on. Here we go . . . . . . . . .

A while back I put a new tank in the car. I knew the level sender got messed up. So I usually always set the tripometer whenever I filled up. Well this week I only put $10 in to get me through till the next couple of days. I didn't reset the tripometer , and I also didn't calculate having to go to and from work on Tuesday. (70 mile round trip) So the root of all the problems was the simplest of all. . . . .


I RAN OUT OF GAS.

Flame on , I deserve it. But honestly everybody on here , thanks for your help. This is why I love Honda-Tech.com. I hope I am not the only one to learn an important lesson.

 

lol, hey man it happens!