Hey guys, new to the forum, I have a 1996 civic sedan with a basic turbo kit, 8psi, d16y7 with y8 intake mani. T3 turbo. I’m having an issue where when it gets cold out, anywhere below say 5 degrees Celsius, my civic will only run on 3 cylinders until it is warmed up. I’ve been trying to figure out the issue for a while with no luck, I replaced cap, coil, plugs, plug wires, no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Which cylinder is out when cold ?

 

i am not sure

 

Well, that is where you start.

 

Is it only when it's cold outside? This suspiciously sounds like a tune/fuel issue.

 

that’s what I was thinking at first but I’ve always been running good 91 and I had the car tuned by one of the best tuners in my area, I may try to reach out to him as well and see if he knows anything but he’s hard to get a hold of

 

Check Fuel pump, Injectors, Fuel Pressure and Dizzy.

 

fuel pump sounds healthy, I replaced everything in the distributer but I’ll check it out, should I just try unplugging the injectors whenever it’s missing to see if one of them is bad?

 

Pull the plug wires one by one while it's cold and missing until you find which one is doing it. Continue troubleshooting from there. Do a compression test.

 

Look at your temperature based fuel compensations - what are they set to (assuming you have a way to look at the tune)?

 

I don’t have any way of checking the tune unfortunately

 

What is the tune situation then? Chipped? What program? Etc..

 

im not sure what program it is, I know it’s a chipped obd1 p06 , i bought it used and he hadn’t told me what the program was on it. As it’s also my first turbo car I’m not very familiar with the ecu/tuning portion

 

Ok. Now I'm effectively confused.. You bought the car with an unknown chipped ECU, or you had it tuned by a local tuner, which is it?

 

I built the car, I bought the ECU separate and was told it was chipped but the info on the chip was unknown, i then had the car tuned and he never told me what type of software he had used.

 

Use a laser thermometer and check each of the exhaust runners with it, it may tell you one if the runners (cylinders) is extra cold/hot and you may be able to narrow it down from there.

 

Thanks for the clarification on this. Now what injectors and map sensor are you running?

 

stock map sensor and DSM 450cc injectors

 

You got a resistor box for those DSM injectors?

 

yes I do

 

Any issues with that? All wiring and such good there?

 

ya everything was wired up properly and working fine, I think I’m going to pull plug wires and the injector plugs too and do some diagnosing

 

that would help. Lol! Check resistance on the injectors as well, they should all be within +/- 1ohm of each other.