Okay, so I picked up my project CRX last night. I'm not sure exactly what is done to it, but i know the engine has been rebuilt, and it idles like its got some pretty aggressive cams in it. (I think it may be the IACV)

The car drives fine for 30-40 miles with a couple bogging issues, where it seems the car stalls for split seconds at a time every 5 miles or so. After awhile of driving, the "hiccuping" or stalling gets worse until it finally stalls.

After leaving it on the side of the road for twenty minutes i was able to get it to start again and drive it 5 miles to the next rest stop, and left it there because it seems to work better after I let it rest for awhile.

It's still sixty miles away from home, and I have to complete the rest of the sixty miles without it breaking down because there are no more rest stops or exits to give it a break.

Any ideas on whats wrong?

 

could even be a bad o2, or the fitv, not excluding the iacv, maybe even the dizzy, that's a hard one there

 

I really think its the dizzy or plugs at this point.

But I also thiink the IACV needs to be cleaned, and the timing needs to be adjusted.

Hopefully it's nothing expensive

 

my guess is distributor, or a component within it..

 

Its 5 degrees out today, and the car wouldnt start, so i pulled the oil cap off the valve cover and found the the oil has the consistency of peanut butter

Okay, so maybe its more like really thick maple syrup.

So the car is currently stuck until the weather fares better.

I took off the shift boot because it was torn and old, and waht did i find?!
The ground!! lol. The shifter only takes upf like half the space of the stock one, and you can see right thru the chassis to the road beneath the car.It's cool


At this point, once the weather gets better, I plan on (in order):

Checking the ignition components
Fixing the Tach
Cleaning the IACV (fix the idle)
Clean (strip) the interior
Clean up the mess of ghetto rigged wiring
Adjusting the Timing (if needed)
Start Body work

 

wow oil like peanut butter is not good, you might wanna get a compression check cause that could also be a sign of a bad head gasket or even bad cylinders

 

do you have a check engine light on??? if so know the code, also could be a coolant sensor prob when they trip out it throws the ecu into limp mode and cold the car will barley start, my b18 crx was doing this and it was just a wire problem.

 

I forgot to mention. The piston rings are totalled, the engine has been burning oil for awhile, i didnt know that would cause it to thicken the oil though?

I cleaned the IACV last week and it didnt fix the idle, I'm going to check the FITV, the idle screw, and test the TPS sensor next week.

I think the stalling/hiccuping issue could be a bad engine ground cable, so I will be checking/adding a cable when i get the chance (probably next week)

Once I get these engine problems figured out, I'm going to be pulling the head and swapping the pistons and piston rings. The car came with brand new 11.8:1 pistons and ring set.

At this point the car is probably burning oil pretty badly and I doubt the compression is much over 100 psi IF that. She wont really rev much over 4k, at that point she starts to stumble and wants to stall. The car also smokes VERY badly while idling and driving down the road.

Once i get these small problems figured out, these new pistons are going in, I cant wait.


Edit: While the car was stalling on the highway a couple weeks ago, it did throw a CEL twice, I still havent gotten around to checking it yet though