After draining the 3 year old gas from my 2001 accord with a f23 vtech I still have misfires. I kind of thought that I would but just wanted to get the old gas out to eliminate that as the problem. A little history about about the car: I bought the car wrecked to repair and sell to make money on. (yeah right). After replacing the core support and all the front end parts the car ran great. I even took it around the neighborhood a couple of times and the car always ran very well. I bought a couple of other cars and parked this one and it ended up sitting about 6 months. I bought a battery for the car after the sitting time and when I started the car it has ran very ruff ever since. So today I drained the gas tank and put 5 gallons of good gas in the car. I started the car and let it run a few minutes to clear the old gas out of the lines and the car still runs like crap. I got my obd scanner and it had the following codes stored from before I drained the old gas. P0301, P0302,P0303,P0300 and P01399 which are all misfire codes. I erased all stored codes and after starting it threw codes p1399 and p0301. I checked the firing order of the plug wires and they are correct. I put a new distributor cap on which did nothing. I pulled the plugs and all looked good except for #1 which was black and a little wet looking. I cleaned and dried the plug and switched the #1 and #4 plugs with each other and still threw a p0301 code after switching. At idle it sounds like the rods are rattling. I am at a lose as to where to go from here. I do not understand how a good running car can get this screwed up after just sitting a couple of months. Anyone have any idea about what could be going on with this car?

 

Just a thought, I'm thinking possibly the 3 year old gas could have clogged the injectors which is making the car run like crap and throwing misfire codes. Going to do a valve adjustment on it monday and if I am still having trouble going to turn to the injectors.

 

I fought a misfire problem for quite some time on mine, in a similar situation, just a few weeks ago. After adjusting valve clearances, and then getting bad advice on spark plugs and distributor parts I ended up fixing it with fuel injectors. P0301 is supposed to mean the problem is in cylinder 1 but sometimes the computer doesn't get it right. 1399 just means you have a pending code. Ignore the 1399. You can either replace just the fuel injector on cylinder 1 or all of them. I ended up replacing all of the fuel injectors in mine with ones I got from the junkyard out of a decent looking engine on an Accord of the same generation (1998-2002 are all the same 6th generation) and it ran great. A fuel injector at my junkyard is $8. If you buy a refurbished one at a parts store it is $40, a new one at a parts store is $80 and a new one from the dealer is even more. If it doesn't work, you can usually get your money back at the junkyard even if you've installed it. If you have a multimeter/voltmeter you can check the resistance and it should be about 11.8 ohms on a good injector. To take the injectors out you have to take several things off first, including the fuel pressure regulator, the fuel line and some hoses and connectors that are in the way. If you have the ability to check the fuel pressure first, that would be best, since the fuel pump may have suffered from the bad gas as well, but finding the right connector for the fuel line was hard for me. If it was me I would replace them all at the same time. Do the work on a cold engine because some fuel is going to spill out when you remove the fuel line and you don't want it to catch on fire on a hot engine. Also, lubricate the o-rings/seals on the injectors, and on the inside of the fuel rail openings, just a little, before you try to push them back into the fuel rail or they can bind, tear and fail to seal. If the rods are rattling that's a different issue - check the oil level and put in some Lucas oil treatment. I would put in some really good premium gas for the first tank, like Shell V power as the cleaners these days in these 1st tier gases are for real. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the response, I am more or less leaning towards the injectors. Before I erased the codes It had codes p0301,p0302,p0303,p0300 and code p1399. I only let the engine run a minute or two after erasing them before codes p0301 and p1399 reappeared. The others may have come back it I had let it run longer. Whatever happened happened during a month or two when the car just sat without being started. It seems the injectors would be the most likely thing to go bad especially with old smelly gas. I am going to the junk yard tomorrow and get some injectors and see what happens. Going to replace them all. Will post up the results. Thanks again

 

I have a 98 accord with a non vtech parts car, Would the non vtech injectors on that car be the same as a 01 accord vtech? If so I will use them.

 

look it up at honda parts cheap

 

I tested the fuel injectors today for resistance with my multi meter. Had a reading of 12.0-12.1 on all injectors so for now I am turning my attention away from the injectors. Going to do a compression test tomorrow and if all checks out going to try a valve adjust. There is some noise under the valve cover.

 

Did u solve this problem?? Im having same problem but my car just runs rough at idle and misfires but driving it runs like new

 

To be honest once I found a anti-fouler in cyl 1 I said screw it. The car is still parked in the same place it was when I started this thread.I only wish I had not put the money into the car that I did. I still can not understand how my problems started from the car just sitting in my yard. The car ran great and then I got busy doing other things and let the car sit about a month. Then when I went back to work on it I had all these codes and a bad running engine. Thinking I am going to cut my losses. Really don't want or have the money to put in this car.

 

I fixed mine by replacing every electric thing inside of the distributor. I just went to the junkyard and pulled the distributor guts out of a wrecked accord. Poppped the 3 things inside of mine and 90miles later no misfire

 

Did you ever run the compression test ? You could try just replacing the valve seals and seeing if that fixes it. You just use a leakdown tester and pump in about 60psi of air to hold the valves up and then use this tool to take off the valve keepers. There are how-to's on youtube.