I have this weird problem that will occur randomly. Driving on the freeway; as I give about 50% throttle to pass a car, my car will just stop responding. All lights will remain on but when trying to step on the gas pedal it will not respond. My wideband will just read 21.9 as if the car was in the ON position.

I had to pop the clutch a few times for the car to respond again. Besides that the car drives fine even at WOT 1-3 gear pulls. I am stumped.

Has anyone ever had this issue before?

 

I've seen this happen on two cars... Once it was a wiring related issue... Once it was the main relay.

 

That's my guess.

 

Thanks for responding JR, I don't think you remember but I've had this issue before; I also had a thread on hrtuning at that time. The problem went away for a few months and now it's back.

I have tried another main relay at that time with no luck. Any idea where I would start looking based on wiring?

 

bump need ideas.

 

Because it is so intermittent, I would check the TPS.

I am guessing, because you did not say engine stalled, that it is not a no spark or no fuel issue, just not enough fuel. 94

 

You mean recalibrate the tps?

In order to get the car running again I have to pop the clutch or restart it with the key.

 

OIC, the engine does stall.

Then the question is, are you loosing fuel or spark.

Have you ever had it do it when just sitting, or is it only when driving?

Is the "cut-out" instant or does it lose power "slowly", [idle down and then stall]? 94

 

Never happens when idling or WOT.

It is instantly. I'll gas up to pass a car and right when I let off the gas pedal car would be dead.

 

Instant loss of power, [engine stall] has to be either no spark or fuel cut off at injectors, either no power to injectors or no pulse to injectors.

No power to injectors could be a problem with the PGM-FI Main Relay, [injector relay] or power to the PGM-FI Main relay, because it is intermittent, I would start by putting "tell-tale's" on the powers, [12V constant and 12V ign.] to the PGM-FI Main Relay and head out to the freeway and "induce" the problem.

We use them all the time when we have customers with intermittent problems.

I made myself a telltale box, just a box I can place on the dash, it has eight 12V LEDs in it, [4 LEDs are grounded, and 4 LEDs have the 12V side connected] power and ground go to a lighter adapter so I can plug it into the cars lighter, there are eight "plug-ins" on the back of the box, 4 for the grounded LEDs and 4 for the powered LEDs, I will run jumper leads to anything I need a telltale on.

In your case I would connect jumpers to the two power at the PGM-FI Main Relay and connect to the grounded LEDs, I would also connect one of the grounded LEDs to the hot side of an injector and one of the powered LEDs to the ground side of the injector and a grounded LED to the power for the distributor assembly, when driving the 4 grounded LEDs would be on, [powers to PGM-FI Main Relay, power to injector and power to distributor assembly] and the one powered LED would be blinking, [injector pulsing].

If any of the above is the problem one of the LEDs would go out.

You could rig something up pretty easily, even a 12V test light would work for the powers, an LED type 12V test light would work for injector pulse. 94

 

You should post a picture of your telltale box so I have an idea. I'm straight up confused and I'm usually pretty good with cars ahaha.

 

bump, resoldering an extra main relay. I highly doubt it's the problem. Car seems to run lean under load and idle rich now. Motha F

 

My car had a similar problem. It started out very intermittent and then became an every day occurrence. I swapped in a good known coil and igniter, and the problem still continued. That wasn't it. Then I re-soldered the main relay and the car ran fine for 3 months without a hiccup. Sure enough, the last cruise before winter it died on the way home.

I don't know if resoldering the main relay actually fixed it for those 3 months, or if I have a different issue all to gather.

 

So did you ever resolve it?

 

Nope. Parked it in the garage for the winter. I'm going to buy a new main relay instead of re-soldering it again and see what happens. If that doesn't fix it, I dunno what I'm going to do.

I know this doesn't help you, but you're not alone.

 

had the same problem. turned out to be the ground that goes on the housing of the thermostat. its most likely connecting and disconnecting from the engine shifting in the bay

 

Ditto the above^^^ if you loose the ground at the thermostat housing you loose the ground for the PGM-FI Main Relay, injectors would loose power, stall would be instant, popping the clutch would move engine, re establishing ground.

Definitely worth checking, even if just to eliminate it as the problem, I would remove the ground lead(s) and clean all contact surfaces and reconnect, at the same time do the same with the main grounds, batt., batt. to chassis and chassis to engine, same way, remove, clean and reconnect. 94

 

How's it possible though? It's fine in high load at WOT. I cleaned all my grounds just a few months ago, even re sanded it. I guess ill check my battery connections as well.

 

I'll keep the thread updated.

 

Did you get the new soldered main relay in there yet?

 

If ground is "lifting" it may only be when engine is is torqued part of the way, not all the way when at WOT.

As I said, check it if for no other reason then to eliminate it as the problem, a week does not go by without us getting a car/truck in the shop that has some mysterious intermittent problem that can not be found by dealers and other shops, the customer eventually is sent to us, Dave Ward Auto Electrical, and in a lot of cases all it is is a simple ground someplace that "looks" good and has been checked, but as my boss says, you can't check a connection by looking at it, it must be disconnected, cleaned and then reconnected, it is the only way to be sure the connection is good.

His attitude is if there is an electical problem, first check the fuses then check the grounds, if it is an intermitent problem or if one circuit effects another circuit, [turning on signals dims the dash lights] check the ground first, he is right 99.99% of the time, the other .01% is just because he forgot. 94

 

Nope I haven't, been busy. I will update once I do. Sorry for the lag

 

I now have two civics that do this.

Bump