My car started experiencing the infamous J series engine "hot soak" / heat soak symptoms at around 100,000 miles (car now has 151k miles on it). For the record I have a 2002 Honda Accord and supposedly Honda was aware of this issue back as early as the 2000 model year. They even went so far as to release service bulletin 00-024 to issue a fix for the problem.

Now this problem *should have* been corrected in the 01 and 02 model. Mine being a 2002, I should have the updated FPR and PCM with the new mapping data. Nonetheless, I still experience rough starts when the engine is warm after doing quick errands and stopping and starting the engine within 10-15 minute driving periods.

So far I have lived with this issue by packing my errands together so that way I give my car at least 35 minutes before attempting to restart the engine and I never have a problem when I do this.

In researching my issue specifically, I have found a pretty large laundry list as to what could possibly be causing it "hot soak"/warm rough start issue.

I've heard it could be...

Now whenever I did have a rough warm start, my particular 02 model never threw any CEL codes. I never got a misfire or anything like that (although it sure felt like it was misfiring and rumbling pretty rough). After a while of waiting 35 minutes in between starts then I eventually did get a separate CEL which also engaged the TCS light in conjunction at the same time. Turned out that it was complaining about a clogged EGR... So I got that cleaned and replaced. CEL hasn't come on with that same code since but the "hot soak"/warm rough start issue persists with varying degrees.

My question is... why is my 02 having the dreaded "hot soak" like symptoms when Honda supposedly addressed it in the late model 6th generation of the Accord? And does anyone really know of a real fix that worked?

I know there are many other 6th gen Accord owners out there with the same problem as me and online forums and YouTube videos are never definitive with whether a proposed solution actually worked.

Please, any advice would be hugely appreciated.


Here is a picture of the Fuel Pressure Regulator in my engine bay http://imgur.com/61HmYus

 

I would think it's possible the egr ports need cleaning not just the egr valve. If it were me, I would do that. Since it doesn't happen in the early years of this vehicles life I would think it's a buildup of something that occurs. The EGR ports building up of carbon could be the issue.

 

My mechanic said he did clean out the EGR port and made it a little larger so it wouldn't clog up again too quickly.

All in all, I'm pretty sure the EGR portion of the problem I experienced was resolved. When I was experiencing the EGR related issues I felt like my car was just going to stall when idling at traffic lights and such. After the valve was replaced and port was cleaned the car ran much better at idle and the CEL stayed off.

 

Did he just remove the egr valve and clean that port up or did he pull the intake and actually clean all the ports ?

 

I didn't see him do it but he said he took the valve cover off and cleaned the EGR port (I don't remember him saying more than one port) and replaced the entire EGR valve with a new one.

 

Yeah, this whole heat soak thing is really strange because if it was a hardware issue you would think it would do it right off the lot, not after x amount of miles.

 

Yea, I've heard that exact same arguement before. It really doesn't make much sense to me either that vaporized fuel in the rails would only show up after 100,000 or so miles. If that was really the problem then it should have been obviously from the beginning of these models being manufactured.

I've also heard people replacing the FPR and PCM as per the Honda technical service bulletin with the newer parts and it still didn't correct the problem.

That's pretty much why I started this thread. I find it odd that there are so many possible causes but there's little out there on the net of what actually works for people that had the problem and got it resolved. It just seems like either some of these Accord owners either never got it fixed or learned to live with it like I have and adapted.