New guy here. A little intro, I drive a 2000 Chevy Silverado, and I'm more of a truck guy, but I'm interested in all vehicles. My Dad has a '96 Civic hatch with 220,089 miles on it. It's been a great (little) car with almost zero problems until last night.

Like I said before, it's a 1996 Civic DX Hatchback (automatic tranny) with 220,000 miles on it. My dad was driving home in a rain storm, and before he realized it, he had driven through 8"-10" of water at about 30 mph.

Right after that, the check engine light came on, the speedo/odo stopped reading, and the dash lights and headlights started to pulsate slowly. He drove about 50 miles at highway speeds like this, and the car ran fine except for the things mentioned above.

He started it up this morning, and it started and idled fine, but he didn't drive it. I got home this afternoon, and it started right up. Check engine light still on, still pulsating. It drove fine for about the first half-mile (no speedo though), but once the car started to warm up a little bit, the speedo started jumping all over the place (I was doing 85 in my friend's driveway! ), and the transmission started to go crazy. It seemed like it was "hunting" for a gear, and would go from first, to fourth, to second, back to first randomly, and all of this was with consistent throttle, under 35 mph.

I put about 3 miles on the car today, and the warmer it got, the worse the transmission got. I was starting from a stop sign once, and it bucked a little bit, and just died, but started right up again.

It also wouldn't go into reverse gear a couple of times. When I parked it in the driveway and put the transmission in park, the idle dropped extremely low (felt like about 500 rpm?), and was obviously very rough. The speedometer was also reading about 15mph, and the odometer was moving.

The first thing that comes to mind to me is a computer issue. Now for the questions:

1. Does this car have separate engine and transmission control modules, or is it one unit?

2. Where is it/are they located, and could a water have damaged it?

3. Does it sound like I'm on the right track? If not, please correct me.

Sorry for the long post, I just didn't want to leave anything out. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

-Dan

 

I also checked the transmission fluid. Level's good, no burnt smell at all.

 

the tranny i belive doesnt have a contorl module at all. it hink the problems your having, are from wher the water went, like i think it made it to the ignition wires and or filled the tubes for the spark plugs,a nd now its misfiring, as for the speedo, i thinkt he vss vehicle speed sensor is goofed up. its telling the car a speed and the tranny is reacting accordingly, and this causes the odometer to count. start looking for watrer and blow it out. pm for mroe help

 

I'll look into the VSS, but I'm not so sure about the plugs/wires. When it is first started, the car idles fine (smooth, same RPM as usual), the idle is only affected after the car has warmed up and been put in park, so I don't know...

Thanks for the help though, I'll definitely look into the vehicle speed sensor. Where is it located?

 

autos have a TCU should be inside under dash next to console

 

Hm... So if it's inside, chances of it getting wet look pretty slim. Looking more and more like the VSS, and maybe something else is up that is causing the headlights/dash lights to dim and brighten.

I'll try to get the codes read tomorrow, that should be helpful info.

Anybody else?

 

i would clean all the grounds, un plug the vss connector and see if there is moisture build up.
check the grounds. i'm not going to tell you where they are, because i don't know
i know on my 95, they are on the near each headlight on the uni-body. also on the thermo housing. clean the battery grounds also.

 

after heavy rain my 96 cx hatch would do the same thing after a couple of days of dry weather it went away

 

water + wires = i pressure washed my engine bay and got some water on the wires, just chilled until it all dried up and its all good!