Looking for any advice I can find. I'm the original owner of a '98 ITR with 88k mile. A week ago when accelerating away from a stop light ( normal driving, not flooring it) my car started to bog and stutter. I engaged the clutch and revved the motor and it seemed to go away. Now this is happening maybe once or twice a day. )I thought it was maybe a clutch slipping but later determined the clutch is strong.) Usually I can rev the motor immediatly and solves the problem. The other day it happened again and this time when i engaged the clutch, I floored the throttle and held it there for about 30 seconds. The rpm stayed at about 1500 and would not go higher. I finally lifted and the rpm went to idle, with never a feeling that it would stall. I took it to my friends house who is a Tech at the local Acura dealership and checked for codes. Nothing. No CEL. Drove the car around with a fuel pressure guage and tried to get it to bog again. When it finally did, the fuel pressure did not drop off. ( btw, we changed the fuel filter earlier) Now I'm wondering if it is ignition related? Going to look into that tomorrow. If anyone has ever had a similar issue, i'd love to hear from you!! Thanks in advance.

 

Just had the same problem with a 2000 nissan sentra at work and it was the mass air flow sensor. Mostly all driveability codes never produce a cell so its a bitch. I originally thought it was a clogged cat but that was not it. Put your hand up to the muffler and feel the pressure coming out with someone holding the throttle around 3 thousand rpm's. If poor pressure coming out could be the cat. Hope you figure it out though either way.

 

Hondas dont have a mass airflow sensor, they run off of map sensors. It could be the TPS related, like throttle body sticking or tps not set properly or the screws are maybe loose and it slipped, causing the voltage to jump around. With no CEL,s it could be Ignition related spark plugs, spark plug wires or the whole entire distributor. Ignitor or igniton coil getting hot. Cap and rotor. Anything else on a OBD2A car would show like O2, or Ecu ground. It also could be a direct short. No telling, but hoped all that helped you a little.

 

I knew they didnt have one i was just venting about my own problem.

 

distributor or grounding problem.

 

Thanks guys for responding. Opened up the distributor to find a burn mark on the coil. Looks lik its shorting to a small casting above it on the dist housing. Im going to order a coil/ignitor/ cap and rotor. Im crossing my fingers this solves my issue. And as an unrelated issue, im getting a CEL code for a bad cat. Any recomendations as far as an after market cat , or should I stay oem? Or after my emissions test next month, AZ is only going to require a smog check every other year. Should I do a test pipe with a CEL eliminator?

 

cat wise the magnaflows are less restrictive, i have no idea how strict your state is though. they may pass, may not?

or you could run a JDM 97 spec downpipe and JDM cat. it's an easy way to upgrade to 2.5" and the JDM cats are clean.

spark wise, you can trouble shoot by switching out the dizzy to see if it cures your problem. old spark plug wires are famous for this as well. what you describe sounds very spark related to me. i would start with the dizzy and wires & see what happens. if i had to pick one of those two it would be the wires first. as for the coil, you can ohm it out but i've seen bad coils pass the test. spark issues you really do have part swap to troubleshoot. or you have to find someone smarter than i am that knows a better way to do it

btw, buy new plugs while your're at it.