Hi everyone,

I have a 1996 Accord EX that has about 165,000 miles on it. It had been running great until recently.

The past few weeks it has been running really rough and not sounding like it normally does. About two weeks after my last oil change the engine started sounding really rough. so i pulled into a gas station and checked the oil and it was over a quart low. It has never burned/leaked oil in the past so this was quite surprising.

Also around the same time the engine tripped a CEL giving me a P0171 code (fuel system running lean) I bought a new fuel filter suspecting that that the old one was dirty and was lowering the fuel pressure enough to cause a lean mixture. Although I have not installed it yet. Some resources suggest that this could be caused by byd O2 sensors but i suspect that this is not the case since i replaced all of mine just under a year ago.

If those two things aren't bad enough I've got something that is really scaring me and that is this strange popping/ sputtering noise coming from the engine. Yesterday it seemed to only do it when the engine was cold but today its doing it more and more until recently where its doing it all the time while idling. I took a video of it and put it on youtube so you can hear the sound I am talking about. It sounds really bad and and perplexed by what it could be.

here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TrZuVbfTBA

If anyone can give me some insight about what could be causing this, I would be much appreciative.

Thanks

Charlie

 

A tune up will be needed if it has not been done in the recent past. This could be low fuel pressure as you have suspected or a weak spark due to worn plugs or a weak ignition coil.

I heard that autozone can test honda coils but I do not know how they do it nor do I know if this is even a good enough test to stress the coil enough.

Clamp off the return fuel line after the fuel rail going back to the fuel tank and see if the issue clears up, this will test fuel related probs, let us know what you find please.