Hello. I'm reasonably familiar with Integras from time spent doing maintenance and repairs on my own.


Three months ago, my teg was stolen and just yesterday it got found, and I have it back. It's in rough shape. I love the car dearly so I'm going through the effort of repairs for the experience of fixing parts on it. Some details about its condition


It sat for, like I said, about three months. After a distributor cap cleaning, it fired right up because hondas never truly die baby. Engine-wise, seems to all be in working order. Appears to run and drive fairly normally, all things considered. As well as you would expect, at least.


Problem 1: Cat


They hacked off the cat, for sure. The car is very very loud, as to be expected, and I do notice what is either a lag in engine power, or my own hesitation to press the pedal just because of the sheer volume. The conclusion I've come to, without having really looked at it just yet, is that I'll assess how clean they hacked it off, and most likely just install flexible tubing secured with clamps, at least as a temporary measure until I can decide to replace the exhaust system like I've said I was gonna do for the last two years now, which will likely be never. Will this measure be enough to reliably call the cat-theft problem resolved, for the most part? I mean, will that restore power loss if that even really is a thing I'm experiencing, and will that be enough to muffle the sound enough that I won't get pulled over for it? I'll probably make a whole thread for the cat itself if I have any trouble. I haven't really looked into this one much admittedly, I just mostly wanna know if there's anything I need to be mindful of during this process, any integra-specific information, like if I gotta make sure the o2 sensors are any kind of way or what have you, I haven't had to do any exhaust-centric work, so it's not something I've had the circumstance to learn very thoroughly beyond "how hard is it" cursory googling. anything I should know about the exhaust system before I really start working on it?


Problem 2: Water damage


This will be very, very relevant to problem 3. The fine folks that stole it left the sunroof entirely open, and the Pacific Northwest rain we've been getting the last couple weeks filled it to about 3-4 inches of water, with the driver and passenger windows up. There is significant mold and mildew, which I assume is to the point now that I had best just replace the carpeting entirely. Miraculously, the power windows still work. The good news is the radio still works, but the bad news is it's because it is not in THIS car anymore, the thieves yanked it out. If it would be relevant, I can post pictures of that, there's a wiring plug that's 6 or 8 pin I believe, and one audio cable that I can see from a glance. Power to the sunroof still works, but the sunroof does not close entirely, it gets all the way to shut and doesn't pop down into place. The motor is audibly engaging when I hit the button, and I've examined the tracks and found no blockages or any foliage wedged, but it's my number one suspect that that's what's going on, but I haven't really looked into that yet, it is low on my priority list because it'll prolly be the easiest to do


What i'm more--most--concerned about is


Problem 3: Dash Cluster and electrical malfunction


It is no surprise to me that there's electrical problems. The dash cluster is very erratic, all the lights stick on and when I go to turn them off, either they don't respond at all or some of them turn off, some of them dim. I can sometimes get them to turn off by opening the door to activate the door chime signaling that the lights are still on, turning on the blinker, and pressing the hazard lights. The door chime will ding very, very rapidly like an old timey telephone in time with when the blinker should be clicking. The clock dims with any light activity like blinkers and such, and the hi beams will turn on when I pull the lever, but will turn back on when I let go. And speaking of turn signals, when the car is on and driving they flash very rapidly, which the google has told me is an indicator of a blown bulb somewhere. All of the lights in the car appear to be operational, and when starting all the test lights come on just fine and normal. It's worth mentioning, it appears that the climate control panel appears fine? Seemingly unaffected. My biggest question is if there's any likely candidates for this, and where I should start looking to find exactly what the culprit is. I've also checked all the fuses in the car, and everything seems to be just fine.


Would this be a wiring harness situation, an ECM issue? ECM was above the water line, but I assume there's several wires that run underneath the carpeting, and it is my wonder if one of those might be the problem, and if so which would be the likeliest place to start looking. I am fairly mechanically inclined, but I am pretty inexperienced with electrical and wiring, so that's gonna be an "explain it like i'm five" area. My experience for the past 6 or so years with this car has been "figure out what chunk of car is broken, yank it out and put in a new one" and I don't know if electrical really works that way.


Any counsel or tips would be greatly appreciated, and I well expect there's details I'm overlooking. I've tried googling the electrical problem specifically to very little progress and it seems like the hardest one so i'm trying to tackle that first. I can provide pictures and video if helpful, I only took one during the day and it doesn't show much of the problem so I'm just waiting for morning to get more detailed behavior on camera. I greatly appreciate your time and energy. Even just pointing me to what kind of google searches I should be doing, I would be very thankful for.


1994 Acura Integra LS

B18b1

210k Miles


(and if this thread belongs elsewhere, please let me know and I'll fix it)