OK, So I havent been on here in years and forgive me I am not a Honda guy so some of this may seem a little silly but instead of throwing a bunch of parts at possible fixes I thought I would try to narrow it down a bit. Thanks for your patience with me.

The car is a 94 Accord wagon 4 cyl automatic with aprox 250K on it.

A couple weeks ago (could be completely unrelated) when i shut the car off after driving home I notice the electric fans were on. They never come on as I dont do city driving and it never gets hot enough to kick them on. I let them run for about 10 minutes, still on so I ran the car around the block to circulate the coolant and shut it off. Fans still running. Quick fix, unplug the fans for now.

The real issue is the stalling of the vehicle now. A couple days after the fan issue it died shortly after starting for the day. Pulled over, cranked a bit and then it restarted. I started making mental notes as now it is happening every time the car has either sat over night or cooled down from sitting all day. Fresh start, when it gets up to operating temp it dies. If I kick it in to neutral and crank while coasting it just cranks. If I turn the key back one notch to "reset" the system it starts right up. I would not have any problems with the car until it sat again and we start the process over again.


This has been going on for about a week to 10 days. Engine light comes on when it dies but doesnt stay on once restarted. Annoying, but I am collecting information each time it happens.

Last week on Thurs I drove it more than I normally would. It and out running errands all day. Same issue in the morning. No issues the rest of the day until on about the 5th or 6th trip of the day it dies. Only this time it had been warm for quite some time. I coast and it restarts as it normally would but I only go a few hundred yards and it dies again. This repeated itself until I could finally limp it home. It really hasnt been driven since. Only difference right before I made it home I put it in park. Let it sit for a few seconds, took the key all the way back to the beginning and then it started up and drove home.

There is a definite pattern so I am hoping with all the details it would end up being a wild goose chase of randomly throwing parts at it.

If you need more details let me know. All insight is appreciated. Thanks!

 

I am sure there are people with more experience that can weigh in on this, but to me it seems like you are having an intermittent fuel delivery issue. I would first replace the fuel pump relay and the fuel filter while you are at it. I think your fuel pump may be getting old and is not able to keep up. If the issue persists after those two relatively cheap fixes, I would replace it (including the sock on the bottom of the pump). As far as the fans go, I would say that is probably unrelated. Could be a bad relay (or bad coolant temp sensor) for the fans and they are stuck on. As for the CEL when the car dies, that is normal, and you can see this by turning the key back one click and putting it back in run (killing the engine). I hope this helps.

 

Unfortunately, short of throwing parts at the car your only option is to troubleshoot. Start with the simple stuff like pulling codes. Even if the check engine light goes away, there could be a code stored if it is related to anything the ecu controls. If there are no codes, then start with the simple stuff like the fuel pump relay (There's a few tutorials out there on how to do it). If the relay is starting to go bad, they will exhibit intermittent issues. Older relays the solder can get lose and heat can cause some of the contacts to lose connectivity etc. Check is all of the grounds. Check the health of the ignition coil (Can't remember if the 94's had an external or internal coil module inside the distributor), check the sensors etc etc.. I'd only replace a part if there was verifiable evidence something was bad.

 

Thanks for the info so far. I will get to pulling codes if there are any first. From everything I have researched so far an ECU issue seems to be the only thing that matches but I am hoping it is something simpler. The fact that it has a pattern of doing it the same time over and over leads me to believe that may be the issue but we will see.

 

Could be inconsistent spark from the Ignition Control Module (Ignitor). That part isn't just involved in starting the engine, but also keeping it running. From the symptoms, it does sound like spark is involved.