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i have a 98 gsr, when you start the car and its cold it runs and idles fine, as soon as the car starts to warm up or is warm out of no where the car will sputter a litle and then just die. if i have my hand on the throttle cable, or if i have my foot ready over the gas pedal i can usually catch it before it completely dies. then i rev it a little let it idle then randomly( sometimes 10 seconds could be a minute or more) the car does it again. I have replaced the main relay and the fuel filter, also did a test on the map sensor and checked the connections on all the sensors i could see.

I have searched and none of them really had said what they did to fix this. i'm going to test the alternator tomorrow with the car on and see how many volts it has.

i also removed the distributor cap and all the contacts seemed clean and no orange dust was seen.

the car has a cel that i checked by jumping the service connector and it flashed once which is the o2 sensor, this didnt seem to happen until later after replacing the main relay and fuel filter... i think i may have spilled gas down into the connector. i'm going to disconnect the battery tomorrow and see if resets and goes away.

i checked the battery terminals and they appear to be clean.

I need your help, the car is a daily driver and i need this thing running!

thanks in advance!

 

Do not worry about the volts being produced, it would have nothing to do with that. It sounds like the ECU is getting bad information and forcing the car to idle too low (through fuel). It being a 98, it can be alot of things, you may want to get a scan tool to watch the info going into the ECU. If you can not go that route, you may need to take it to a shop since it would take you a while to diagnose and they could do it quicker (since this is a daily driver, it could be worth it).

Oh, and yeah, this is my first post, hello!

 

Most auto parts stores can scan for codes for free, not sure if that will help or is the same thing ^ is talking about.

 

well thanks for the help on your first post... are you just talking about a diagnostic tool? or an actual scanner for the ecu to test to see if its bad? thanks!

 

Maybe a dizzy problem? I'm not 100% on how to check them, my buddy's car did the same thing and it turned out to be his ignitor.

 

Ignitor is what I'm thinking, see the same post in the drag racing forum before the MOD's delete it.

If it's gone, buy a rebuilt dizzy, trust me, it's much cheaper in the long run...

 

thanks to all who helped.. i replaced the ignitor and so far so good. drove it around today a little while and it has seemed to fix the problem, hopefully it stays that way lol... i would of bought a rebuilt dizzy but it was hard enough finding an ignitor around here, seems that alot of the local auto parts stores arent restocking the way they used to, i tried alot of them just to find the ignitor..

so thanks again guys!

 

well the problem is back again, ran fine for about 400+ miles now its doing it again. i replaced the ignitor and the problem seemed to go away, then now all of a sudden its back again what do you think?

 

also thought i'd mention that its hotter today then its been around here lately (70's) and it was around the same temperature when it started doing this before

 

Get a new dizzy.

 

how long before the car will restart ?

 

depends, sometimes it will be almost right away, sometimes i have to wait like 30 seconds. why do you ask dtapia? my girlfriend was driving it today when it happened. she said it first happened at a redlight, then she turned around and got back on the highway to come back(dont ask) and she said it died on her a couple times on the highway too.

but i took the distributor off of a running teg, put it on drove it around for about 30 minutes and so far so good... i dont like the junk parts that these autoparts stores carry. do you guys know if acura sells rebuilt distributors? or do you think i should replace the coil and ignitor in mine with an honda one? also i dont know if this would cause this problem but i noticed that on the coil on my car it doesnt have a spring on it where it meets the distributor cap like the other one does, and i seem to remember them all having that spring on any other civic/acura i have had to replace a coil on. do you think that might be some of the cause to my problem?

 

well just for the hell of it, i took the (what i thought was) bad ignitor, and put it in the (what i thought was) bad distributor and put it on the integra i got the distributor off of and when i first started the car the distributor was making a rattling sound. so i shut the car off for about 10 minutes while i went back in the house, came back out and started it and no more rattling noise. i let the car run for about 30 minutes, shut it off. started it back up and let it run again for about 15-20 minutes. i reved the motor and all, the car didnt sputter or even act like it wanted to shut off.

so now i'm stumped. what do you think it could be now? its just weird how i replaced the ignitor and the problem went away for a while, then i replaced the distributor and the problem went away for now. but i put both thought to be bad parts on another car and it ran fine for about 50 minutes total. fan came on and off about 5-6 times i suppose.

could there be water in the gas tank maybe? can a fuel pump cut on and off? its a stock fuel pump so its hard to hear it running, its not like a walbro where they are loud and distinct.

what makes it such a headache is that it doesnt always do it, i just drove the car for 30 minutes and it ran perfect..
i'm really at a loss as to what to do and i need help to get this running! thanks

 

IAC problem?

 

I'm a noob to honda-tech but not to hondas. I have the same motor in my hatch with the same problem,and it turned out to be the pin connections at the dizzy were loose. Cleaned the pins with die-electric cleaner and plugged back in and no problems for over a year now.