I have a 98 Honda CRV that was running well, until yesterday when it shut off while the vehicle was running. I rolled into a parking lot, and I tried to restart the vehicle. I put it into neutral and tried to turn the ignition switch and the vehicle would not start. It would not turn the starter. I happened to have an OBD II scan tool with me at the time. I connected the scan tool and heard a number of things click inside of the dash. I then went and tried to start the car and it started right up. Afterwords I disconnected the scan tool and the engine quit. Again the car would not engage the starter and it would not crank. I rehook up the scantool and the car starts fine. I'm trying to figure out is this a sign of a bad ECU, it almost seems like an engine immobilizer that's kicking in, I've seen in other threads that Honda did not put in an immobilizer in the CRV until later models, but the way that it acts makes me very suspicious about this system. Has anyone else ever experienced a similar sort of problem?

A little bit of background information. It is an all-wheel-drive automatic, with 170,000 miles on it. It had engine problems last fall with a bad block and head. I replaced the block and head with a rebuilt long block and things seem to go all right. Around one month ago, the car would not start and I replaced the coil, and the ignition control module. And then ran fine after that. Around one week ago I had an MIL light come on and it gave me a p0420 code, Catalyst System Efficiency Below Threshold (Bank 1).

I know I seem to find all the weird problems. And this is into another area in which I'm not very familiar with. So I'm coming to you guys for help.

Where would you start to try to figure out what's going on with this problem?

 

check the coil

 

What would i check the coil for? I just changed it about a month ago.

 

Have you checked the main relay?

US sold 97-91 CRV did not come with any factory immobilizer systems.