Hey guys new to the forum and just bought my first Honda. Never thought the day would come, but so far it's been great except the idle. It's an 02 Accord I4 auto btw. It wasn't taken care of very well when I bought it so I figured it just needed a tune up and fresh gas, it hasn't helped. Still has a rough idle/ shudder at idle and off idle it stumbles a little. Almost feels like it's missing. I put new wires, plugs, rotor and cap, seafoam intake, cleaned throttle body and iac. Still has the same problem. Any ideas of what to check next? Oh and I adjusted the throttle cable to get the slack out of it and it missed like crazy, all rpm except full throttle. So I adjusted it back. I don't know if that helps. Thanks!

 

Fuel injectors or Fuel pressure are my guesses. I have the same car and had a similar problem. Mine included a check engine light and P0300 and additional P030X codes. What fixed it for me was "new" injectors from a junkyard car. I started out thinking I would just try these because they were $8 each versus 10 or 20 times that much for new ones and if you put in actual brand new ones you can't get your money back if they don't fix the problem. The ones from the junkyard worked and kept working and I just left them in. And a lot of junkyards will give you a 30 day money back warranty so why not try them? It is good practice/learning on how to take them out too, since there you will find that there are several additional things that have to come out to get the fuel rail out (PCV valve, connector on the throttle body, etc). My recommendation is before you put in the "new" ones, take a Q-tip and put a little engine oil on it and lightly oil the outside of the o-rings and the inside of the fuel rail openings, otherwise they fit so tight they can tear going back in and then you'll have a fuel leak and need to do it all over again. Before you remove your existing ones to replace them you can do 2 tests on the existing ones. First, with the engine running, get a really long screw driver and put the tip near the base of each fuel injector and put the handle against your ear and listen for a regular clicking, which indicates that the injector is getting signal and firing. If one or more of them isn't clicking then there is a problem either with the injector or the signal to the injector. Second, if you have a voltmeter/multimeter, unplug each injector electrical connection and test the internal resistance. On mine they were all 11.7 or 11.8 ohms (it takes a few seconds for the reading to stabilize). If any of them are significantly different then that is a bad injector. You should do the same resistance test on the ones at the junkyard before you take them out in case they are already bad. They can pass the click test and the resistance test and still be clogged internally, which was the case with mine, but if they fail either test then it is a sure sign they are bad. Before you replace anything you can also try to do a fuel pressure test using a loaner pressure test kit from a place like O'Reilly's or AutoZone, but I couldn't find a fitting in the kit that fit on the banjo bolt of my fuel rail. Scotty Kilmer and ChrisFix have some good generic YouTube videos on testing fuel injectors. Classic Gamers HQ has a series of 3 YouTube videos on replacing the fuel injectors on the same exact engine as yours but the video quality is fairly poor.

 

You may also want to check the timing with a timing light. Scotty Kilmer has a video on that too.

 

Hey thanks for the quick reply, I'll test them and see what I find. I cleaned the egr and bled the coolant tonight, figuring why not. And now it's worse. Definitely has a miss at idle and part throttle intermittently. It does have 131000 and never had the timing belt done. I don't know if that could be it too

 

Since it has never been done I would say, emphatically, that the timing belt should (MUST) be done now whether it is the problem or not. If it breaks the engine is toast since these engines are designed as interference engines, which means that if the valves don't move out of the way the piston will hit them and bend everything, so the timing belt is crucial to do NOW! (I am not shouting with the all capital letters, I am just trying to convey the urgency and importance) I did the timing belt on mine and it took awhile but it is do-able with the right tools. Even if you have to buy the tools it is cheaper to do yourself than to pay someone to do it. Gates makes a good timing belt, and get the kit with the new tensioner and the balancer belt as well. As much as it may seem like I am being an extremist, since it is so much work to take the timing belt off most people will always replace the water pump at the same time. You can find all the parts on line without going to Honda. Just get the same manufacturer as Honda used. I got the following from Amazon. You can borrow the Honda wheel hub holder from O'Reilly's. You will also need a large breaker bar and the right sockets, etc but it is do-able. If you subscribe to alldatadiy.com for $30 you can get the official Honda procedure as well.

Gates TCK244 Timing Belt Component Kit

Aisin WPH-001 Engine Water Pump

. There are good YouTube videos by Briansmobile1 and NutzaboutBolts on the same exact engine. There is also a specific video about the balancer belt that you need to watch since no one else covers it "2000 Honda Accord 2.3 LX: balancer belt installation".

 

Hey thanks again for the great info! I was looking into to doing it at some point, but might as well do it now. I'm going to try you're injector test, check for vacuum leaks and check timing tonight and see what happens. Do you know what seals I'll need? The kits don't include seals for some reason other then the water pump.

 

I suspect you may have a vacuum leak or a problem with your throttle position sensor. Did you use a new gasket when you put the EGR valve back on? If things are worse after cleaning the valve you need to go back and figure out what happened there to make the change in the engines behavior. If you have a misfire it would help to narrow down which cylinder is misfiring, or if it is random misfires across the board.

 

Well I figured out part of the problem, the farthest cylinder from the distributor keeps popping the plug wire off. I think that's what has happened every time I open the hood to do something. I sprayed every vacuum line and seal I could with carb cleaner and nothing seemed to have changed the idle. I'll keep digging I guess. Thanks