Ok, I'll try and give as much info as possible, and will update as needed. We have a 1994 honda prelude S that we've stripped and converted for short track (1/2 mile) racing. Rebuilt motor, car stripped with roll cage etc, wiring harness for the dash was cut, custom dash w/o the harness connected.

The car runs great, has plenty of hp and speed. However, after running a few laps, it sputters, misses, loses hp. If we push in the clutch and let the rpm's reset, we can get right back into it and keep going. This will happen periodically throughout the entire race. We've changed ECUs, checked for vaccuum leaks, etc to no avail.

My first thought was that sense all of the sensors aren't connected to the ECU that perhaps it is generating error codes and causing the ECU to "hiccup". By letting the rpm's reset, it clears the codes and we can continue.

My second thought is perhaps it's a fuel-flow problem. Perhaps we've vapor-locking for some reason or another, and by letting the rpm's reset it clears the problem or lets the fuel pump catch up. We have a fuel cell with an external fuel pump.

While we're waiting to get a hold of a wiring harness so we can perhaps pull the codes, does anyone have any stabs or ideas??

Thanks in advance.

 

fuel pump could be going bad?.. just throwing that out there... check it out or try another one

 

Yeah, that was one thought. We replaced it this week, so we'll know saturday when we get to the track. I also read a post about a similar problem someone was having with their street car. They said it was their TPS. So, if the fuel pump doesn't solve our problem, then I guess we'll change out that and see. Any other ideas from anyone??

 

I had a friend with a prelude and his problem was when the motor heated up it lost a lot of power and began to sputter his motor was a h22. Anyways a new ignition coil fixed his problem and later a new O2 sensor brought it back to how he remembered it.

 

We have watched the water temp and there doesn't seem to be any correlation between temp and when it happens. Also, the car can run at idle for long periods (as we're tuning it etc) with no problems, it only seems to occur under load, particularly during heavy acceleration.
We're really hoping it's the fuel pump, if not, then back to square 1.

Also, we have replaced all of the electronics, swapped and switched everything and still have the problem. That's why we were down to the ECU or the fuel pump. But if the pump change doesn't fix it, we're going to throw a new tps at it and see what happens.