Last night, I started my car for the first time in a year and a half. I went from a D15b7 to a D16z6 (turbo isn't on yet)
It ran pretty rough for the first 1-2 min, then leveled out and stayed about 1500 rpm. There's a CEL and a loud *** hiss coming from the intake filter, I'm sure it's not a vac leak. It keeps dying before I can check the code.
But there is a problem... It will only run for a few mins then it gets sluggish, the battery light on the dash flickers, and then the car dies.
The battery was dead. This happened 2x in a row.

I have a couple ideas on what the problem could be, here's my setup:


on top is the stock setup. the bottom one is mine.

Theory 1:
The stock setup has the battery & fuse box side by side, which helps to charge the battery. Mine is far away in the front corner of the bumper. Maybe too far for the battery to get charged? Then I think of when people put their battery in the trunk, it would be the same situation and lots of people relocate to the trunk. So I don't think that having the battery so far away is the problem.

Theory 2:
Bad alternator? It is the same one I had on my old motor when I stopped driving the car. It worked fine the last time the car ran 1.5 yrs ago. Can an alternator go bad just from sitting?

Theory 3:
Bad battery? I bought this battery a little over a year ago. it is 275 Cranking Amps / 230 Cold Cranking Amps. (I have no power accessories, AC, heat, wipers, locks, windows, etc) The battery sat since I bought it, but worked perfect when I hooked it up a week ago. Since then I used it to test things like lighting, fuel pump, and even used it to crank the motor some before it started (maybe 30 secs of total cranking) After the cranking, I noticed that it seemed like it started to die (as most batteries would by now), cranking was getting difficult for it. That was all last week and then it sat for 5 days. Last night it was too dead to turn the starter so I hooked up jumper cables to my other civic and it worked. Then I took off the cables and it died in a few mins. I jumped it again and it started up, but then died less than 1 min after I took off the cables.

I'm leaning toward #2 or #3. What do you all think

(here's a pic of the wire tuck if anyone wanted to see what I mean)

 

damn, looks good

have you tested the battery? put it under a load test? granted, the battery has to have a full charge in order to test it. its the easiest to remove and to take to test if need be.

if that checks out, i'd pull the alternator and test it.