Ok. Me and a friend of mine took out my car tonight to just cruise. My friend was driving and met up with another friend of ours with a Civic EX who modified his car like crazy (Show, no go). So its slow, but it looks nice. Anyways, this guy always wants to race, so my friend drops the gear and punches it and obviously burns him.
Ok, so my friend is pushin my car to the max. Redlining every gear and doin the usual stuff. No big problem, since I always redline. So check this, after about 5 minutes of hard driving, my check engine light comes on. Then we're kind've worrying at this point. Then he accelerates again and this time, the car hesitates at 5500rpm or so and won't go passed it. So we slow down and take the exit and check under my hood. Nothing looks wrong or smells wrong. So I reset the ECU and the check engine light is gone and runs perfectly again.


My question is, what went wrong? Was it the o2 sensor? Oh yea, I only have AEM CAI and DC 4-1 header and VAFC on my car. The Skunk2 cams or the cam gears are out of the car at this point. Can someone tell me what went wrong? Thanks.

 

Since your check engine light came on, you should have pulled the code to see what was light indicating. Once you reset your ecu the code is gone and you'll have to wait for your light to come back on if it ever will. The reason you couldn't rev pass 5500 is because the car is in safe mode once your check engine light comes on. Now that you reset the ecu, the car is back to normal.

 

i bet u burnt alot of oil, and there isn't enough pressure in to activate VTEC
so in turn u get a code22 vtec solenoid.

 

An almost identical situation happened to me in my 95 civic...

I had just bought it and I let my friend drive it, and he pushed it up to the redline a couple times and the CEL came on and the car stumbled and died... we pulled off to the side of the road, open up the hood and poked around a bit, but didn't see any smoke coming out of any odd places, so we hopped back in, started it up and drove off (at this point the CEL had gone out).

I'm not sure what it was... I thought maybe it was some kind of rev limiter... but I didn't think a rev limiter was supposed to kill the engine (might be a little dangerous, eh?)

 

I got a couple replies from people. One said it might have been the VAFC and the harness was getting lose. Another person said it was the Oil burning (that might make sense because I haven't had an Oil chage in 7 months and it smelled alot like burning oil when he redlined it), and another person told me it was the O2 sensor....


What do you guys think it is?

 

WOW 7 months?!? Thats not good, anyways you're probably going to want to check the CEL's before replacing or trying to fix anything.

 

yea... 7 months, but I only put 2600miles in 7 months so not quite 3000 miles yet. I'll be changin the oil tomorrow...

 

Im going to put my money on low oil. But as somebody else said when the CEL comes on you should really stop and check the codes. I carry a little jumper in my car with me just in case I need it.

I just thought about something when the low oil code come on (code 22 ) I dont think it puts your car in limp mode.

And you support to change your oil every 3000 miles or 6 months which ever comes first. Try to get in the habit of checking your oil when you stop to fill up on gas, if you plain on keep pushing your car so hard all the time.

Keith


[Modified by kwil666, 12:22 AM 7/1/2002]

 

call me stupid, but.... How do you check th Code when the CEL comes on?

 

I gotta slap you on the wrist for not checking the code. Where's my yardstick?

To check the the DTC's, take a wire (speaker wire or any electric wire) and splice the ends off of it to expose the conductor.

Go to the area to the right of your glovebox/just above your passenger-side kickpanel.

Crook your neck and look under there for a green, rubber boot that encases two (or just one for an OBD-I car) wiring harnesses. It's probably taped to one of the wire clusters.

Pull it off and down out of that area so that you can work with it.

Pull the (2-P aka 2 pins) harness with 2 wires out of the green boot.

Put the wire you made into the two pins to short out the connection.
EDIT: Make sure you get a good connection b/w the two, otherwise it won't give you the codes.

Turn the ignition on to the ON position.

Count the blinks on the CEL. Long blinks = 10's place, and short blinks = singles place.

If there are no codes (which there had to have been in your case), the CEL will just stay on, without blinking.

See C-speed racing for the codes.

http://www.c-speedracing.com/faq/05.html


[Modified by IN VTEC, 11:49 PM 6/30/2002]