My 1991 Honda Civic Ex has developed a new problem. I was at a stop light, and the check engine light came on, then the car started shuddering something awful. The car refused to accelerate. -- I would have guessed I was out of fuel. However, I just put some gas in the car the day before, and so knew I had about a quarter of a tank.

After I coasted through the turn, I put the car into neutral, turned off the car, and turned it back on, and it was back to business as normal. -- for about ten minutes.

I was on the freeway on my way home, going about 50, and the exact same thing happened. The CEL came on, the vehicle started sputtering, and wouldn't accelerate (or maintain speed even). Again, I coasted over to the side of the freeway. This time, unfortunately, I couldn't get the car moving again.

Edit: I should add that the engine revs just fine when I depress the accelerator, it just doesn't actually move, outside of coasting when in gear.

 

An update:

I fetched my car from the freeway tonight. It'd been sitting there about 10 hours, so it was plenty cooled down. I was able to get it moving and off the freeway (and almost home) before the issue started again.

I was mistaken before, the engine doesn't rev at all. I checked my ECU, and it was flashing ERROR 4. The repair manual I have suggests that this is a problem with the distributor.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I discovered that I have oil in my #2 spark plug well.

Obviously this means that I need to replace the valve cover gasket, but I have to ask: Does this issue explain the problems I've been having? Is there something else?

 

common problem - your distributor is probably shot - have you run the diagnostics on it? check wiring connections - my bet is you need a new distributor

 

Thank you for your reply. Based off of the Error code, I was thinking the distributor myself.

As an update though, I have replaced the valve cover gasket and spark plugs, and while I still get the ERROR 4 and the CEL comes on, I'm no longer having the problems I was having before with regards to acceleration.