I have searched and what I've seen isn't describing what I'm seeing on my friends 02 civic hatch. Basically it has done this twice since she bought it. She'll be driving, all of the sudden the car loses power. When I showed up the car would start, and it would idle roughly and somewhat erratic, when I pushed the accelerator the tach would barely move maybe increasing to as high as 1500 RPMs if that but not higher than that. Most of the descriptions of a limp mode I've seen imply that people have at least been able to rev to 4000 or so. She took it to a garage and they've been unable to determine the problem. I have read in my search that something like this seems to happen to this generation, never had anything like this with my DC teg so I'm a little in the dark. I would really appreciate some insight, at this point i feel like there's an issue with the ignition, crank senson, or throttle position sensor that's causing it to limp, or maybe the ECU is just shot. Thanks in advance I really appreciate any help anyone can give on this one.

 

having a shop hook it up to a scan tool to look at all the sensors would be my first suggestion. you can almost always spot a problem sensor by just looking at a screen shot of all the sensor inputs. I did it just the other day to determine that a crank angle sensor was causing a crank, no start condition. what you're describing sounds like it could be a number of things, but a cam angle sensor could be the culprit. but so could many other things, like low fuel pressure, a vacuum leak or bad MAP sensor, etc. limp modes vary, but they always generate a check engine light, which would be the first angle of attack on this diagnosis.

 

did you check the oil level? I had a similar problem a few years ago and the oil level was a little low so it couldn't build up pressure for vtec to run normally so it wouldn't rev but so high. hopefully you get it runnin right again goodluck.

 

disytibtor

 

First things first: look at the plugs. I think it's misfiring. Could be a bad injector/plug. If you don't know how to read the plugs, post a picture of each plug and we can help.

If it's in limp mode it should throw a CEL. Did you read it?

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

 

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

LOL, we have a COP setup homeboy.

limp mode = when you've drank too much and lose the "motivation" to satisfy your gf.