Hey all,
I just purchased a 92 Honda Accord. The car starts up and runs well, however the past 3 days after driving for awhile around town, the engine starts choking and eventually dies. Symptoms include:
Battery light flickers on
Tach and Speedo drop to 0
Very rough idle and very poor response to throttle.

When it eventually dies, it exhibits the symptoms of a dead battery. When I try to start it, it makes the click-click-clicking and won't turn over. The first day, as soon as I jumped it, it started right up and drove home. The 2nd day, it wouldn't take a jump, so I replaced the battery and it drove home. Then again today, it just needed a jump.

Battery reads 12v. 13.5v while running and disconnecting the negative cable has no ill-effect, so alternator seems to be working. I took a video when it happened today: http://youtu.be/ygHI2t19CkA

Ideas? I'm fairly mechanically inclined and willing to test some things out if you have suggestions. New to Hondas though. Thanks in advance!

 

When you test it you need to put a load on the alternator to see if it holds a charge or not. Start the car and turn everything in the car on, everything electrical including the ac and blower and see what voltage reading the multimeter gives.

 

Turned on the a/c, radio, heater, headlights, etc and got 13.9v.

Maybe some sort of intermittent grounding issue? I need to put the voltmeter to it when it happens again...These are the types of problems I hate troubleshooting! Seems like a wild goose chase.

 

Yeah, it's sounding like a grounding issue.

BTW: Dam! 376K miles! Is that the original engine?

 

Yeah, no kidding! I'm just asking for trouble, but no it has a newer engine with about $140k on it...

Maybe grounding is it...That would explain why jumping "resolves" the issue since it uses the jumper cables ground. The grounds look fine, but I'll try replacing the main cable...

 

You can start the car and then put the red lead on the power battery terminal and the negative touching around the ground areas to see if you get a power reading. If not, this would mean the ground is no good or intermittently bad.

I would carefully look over the battery connections especially around the post. When your old battery got old, assuming it was a maintenance type, it could have created a corrosion film that prevents a good connection somewhere along the connections.

When you get a new battery it's always best to use a battery terminal scraper, the type with the wires and use it on the terminals and connections before installing the battery.

 

As a simple thing, draw a line across the crank pulley. Inner to to outer ring. After a day or two be sure the line is....well still a line.