Ok I am about out of ideas as to what this problem is. It's a 94 civic with a lsvtec swap, RLZ tuned crome p28 ECU. The car has 225,000. The engine is very new, only a couple thousand miles. The car ran fine for several weeks after the swap was done, and then started cutting off at random. It sometimes would start back up after sitting for a few minutes. sometimes it just refuses to start even cold. The car loses spark. I replaced the coil, then the igniter, and then the entire distributor with a brand new one. I replaced the main relay, and I removed the ECU and opened it up, everything looks ok, the chip is tight and there are no loose wires in the ECU plug. The car was stock before the swap was done. I have tried jiggling the ignition key with the car running to check for ignition switch contact wear, I have checked all the fuses to be sure they're all tight. I have asked a few people I would consider to be experts and I'm no closer to a solution. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

When you replaced dizzy, was it with a brand new rebuilt Honda one? Or did you replace it with a brand new Taiwan one...

 

Brand new -probably made in China. The old one was a Honda unit but the problem has not changed.

 

Well other than the car shutting off, are there any other symptoms? does it only shut off when at operating temp? or does it do it intermittently when cold? Any CEL Codes?

 

There are no other symptoms. When it runs it runs fine. The wiring harnesses are all stock except for where vtec wires were added. The engine grounds are tight. I have tested the black/yellow wire at the distributor and it has +12V.

 

Do a tune up. Wires plugs etc. could be defective ecu.

 

Plugs have a bit over 1k on them and still look new. Plug wires are OEM Honda 2012.
I got the car running again but it's not running as strong as usual ( like timing is retarded. Also, it is throwing a code 9 (crank sensor). I haven't had time to get back into it but I suspect the new distributor might be defective.

 

Yup. New parts do **** up n can sometimes a defective

 

I did get this fixed, but forgot to follow up. The new Ebay distributor was the culprit. There were sparks flying out of the distributor causing it to misfire. The screw that holds in the rotor button fell out and the rotor came loose and got thrashed around inside the distributor cap, cracking it and bending all the contacts. Also it was severely retarding the timing because it had spun 45* on the shaft. I replaced the cap and rotor and have not had a problem since.
The moral of the story is: Don't trust knock off parts!

 

That rotor screw falls out of oem dizzys too. A drop of blue loctite is the cure

 

More like "you get what you pay for". 94

 

this is currently happening to my friends em1 si. ebay distributor has a bad ignitor. sometimes another cause to those symptoms can be a bad ignition switch.

and yeah, definitely put a tiny bit of low strength loctite on the screw