ok well basically i bought an ef about a week ago, when i bought it we had to jump it to get it to start we figured the battery was just bad because we tested the alitnator by taking off one of the terminals on the battery to see if the car stayed running and it did, then we drove it around the block to make sure it ran good and it ran fantastic, i payed for it and we drove it home, the drive was about 40 minutes. It ran strong most of the time but 3 times in that 40 minutes on the highway it just died pretty much but i was able to start it back up and keep going so we made it home fine and only had to pull over once for a few minutes until i got it started back up. so i got home and parked it showed it off to the family and an hour later tried to start it up and nothing i was bummed the thing that drove me crazy was i just drove it home parked it no problems and nothing happened no one messed with anything at all and it just wouldnt start, also something to keep in mind is when i bought the car they had put in brand new spark plugs spark wires and fuel filter a few weeks before i bought it, so after all that i figured it had to be the battery since we had to jump it and the lights would like dim down before it died so it made sense to me. so i went to wal-mart and bought a brand new battery a 450 cold cranking amp 540 cranking amp battery which is a little bit bigger then what i read the car needed just to be safe and incase i get like fogs/hids it would be nice to have the little bit of extra juice and from what i read you can always get a bigger then you need battery but never smaller so i figured i was safe. anyway i installed the battery and tried to start it and nothing just the starter going but the car never started up. so then i tried to figure out what the problem was i read up on and thought maybe the O2 sensor went bad i went up to the auto store and got a brand new O2 sensor and installed that, nothing still. then my step dad was helping me out and we tested the spark plugs and made sure they were sparking so he got a screw driver and grounded the plugs and they were working fine, we were clueless, then my step dad tried something for the hell of it, we poured gas down the throttlebody and tried starting it up and we had a brief moment of hope when it started up but only ran for a second and shut off so we tried it again and poured a little more fuel and the same thing happend it started up for only a brief second. after that we were all pretty much clueless does anyone have any idea what the problem could be i really am trying to fix it myself without taking it to a mechanic because im pretty tight on money and theyre just going to gouge the crap out of me. any help is greatly appreciaited if you need any more details just ask or any pics just let me know and ill post em up. Thanks a lot.

 

 

crazy dude, same thing happened to me except my car doesnt die.. i have to pour gas into the TB everytime i want to start it..

its a pain but i just kept the TB cover off, it runs a little rich but oh well, its an easy fix until i get mpfi

 

i think its possibly a combo of your dizzy going out, causing the intermittent starting and dying issues. but by mentioning the fuel issue it makes me think perhaps the main fuel relay is at fault. Now i've seen the relay prevent a car from starting before, but not kill it once it is already running. i'm betting if you swapped out the dizzy you'd be good to go. is the check engine light on by chance?

 

When the lights dimmed before it died was there a power loss from the motor at all?

Now when you said it would start momentarily when you put gas in the TB what have you this to me says the fuel pump is bad.

Try this, get to the fuel pump connector that's next to the fuel pump cover, you will have to remove your rear seats(civic) or partial tray(crx) to get to this. What you want to do is unplug the connector in my friends 90 dx it was white weather its the same color for yours I don't know. Now see if there is any play in the connector by pressing and pulling. If there is then that could be your problem, unplug it and see if there is any corrosion on the connectors inside if there is get clean it the best you can.

Plug it back in and try starting it cause this happened to my friends car (90dx crx with mpfi swap and a b18b with obd-0 b18a electronics).

My friend and I went to go look at that crx I was talking about and when he went to go for a test drive it wouldent start, tried everything. the kid even said once in a blue moon it wouldent start but would come back later and it would be fine.

So we tried jumping it and nothing, jumping it and a can of ether we would get a response so there we decided it wasn't getting fuel. We checked everything then I was just wandering around the car thinking about what it could be, then I noticed that the partial shelf was off to the side, So I jumped in and checked out the plug pushed it in unplugged it and plugged it back in told them to start it and it fired right up.

Sorry for the long story but I like giving details. Hope you figure it out would hate to see you get discouraged as usually the most common problems are a ****ed up plug.

 

Time to break out that multi meter and start testing some wires

 

whats my dizzy?

but no the check engine light never has come on,

when i try starting the car the battery light always come on everytime and only sometimes which is weird the oil light will come on.

 

distributor

 

oh yeah lol, im going to look into replacing that then.

i just really hope that solves the problem lol, blowing threw cash buying parts i think are the problem and them not winding up to be the problem.

its so frustrating though earlier today i went to try and start my car for the hell of it and it started! i was like what the hell no way. i ran it for about an hour put some new fuel in it and reved it a bit. i was so happy i didn't want to shut it off afraid it wouldn't start up again. when i finally did shut it off though i tried restarting it and nothing, bummer. like when i try to start it though even a few minutes ago it like almost catches but doesn't you can hear the engine almost start up like its almost there so i am trying to figure out what the problem could be. but thanks for all the help guys.

 

did you ever solve this problem? its very similar to the one im having now.