Hello all, I'm a frequent poster over at hondaswap.com but I have a problem with my Civic and no one can seem to figure out what is wrong.

Here is what is going on.

I have a 94 Civic EX which is bone stock, my daily driver car.
I'm driving to the grocery store one night to pick up some food, and when I come out and get ready to go home, the car will not start. It cranks, but doesn't turn over and every ~5 seconds or so it sounds like it's choking. It was raining, I walked home.

I come back two days later to see if it will start, and viola! it starts no problem. So I'm driving home, I make it about a mile and a half to the light just before my house and it starts to choke up, I give it some gas and it levels out a bit, but then chokes up and dies before the light can turn green. So I push my car the rest of the way home.

I let it sit for a day, come out... it starts up fine. I let it idle for about 10 minutes and it chokes up and dies, won't start again. This happens for the next few days before I get around to start trying to fix things.

I have replaced the fuel pump, fuel and air filters, PGMFI main relay and the spark plugs. To no avail. Within the last year I have replaced the battery, the distributor coil and ignitor and a few misc. small parts. All of my fluids are fine, it doesn't leak anything. The car has about 167k miles on it, but ran like a champ until this happened.

I've checked the fuses and it doesn't look like I've blown any. Which leads me to believe that there are no shorts. I have spark on all cylinders. I pulled off the fast idle controller from the intake manifold and hooked it straight to the battery and it seems to be working (it clicks over when you connect power).

Tonight I talked to a friend and he told me to start the car and keep it at medium RPMS and see what it does. So I start it, keep it between 3-4k for about 6 minutes when my interior light flicks off then back on and I heard what sounded slightly like metal on metal, really quick, kinda like coughing sound... it's hard to describe. I got the smell of burned rubber from the engine bay (or what I think burned rubber smells like). It will also make this same sound (I think) when I'm trying to crank the car over after it has died.

I have an o2 sensor I was going to replace, but I haven't done it yet.

Also I'm getting no codes from the ECU.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

sounds like a possibly clogged cat.

Are you throwing any codes? A bad O2 sensor could cause this

 

after it dies have you checked if it still sparks? if it still primes? or if the injectors are spraying?

 

Check your dizzy.... It could be your icm...

 

It does still spark after it dies, but I haven't pulled the injectors out individually to see if they are spraying or not.
I'm not throwing any codes when the o2 sensor is plugged in... how would I check for a clogged cat?

 

I'm still having no luck with this issue.
I haven't been able to take off the CAT, but the dizzy looks fine. I opened it up and nothing seems loose, plus it gets spark on all four cylinders even after it dies.

 

i had a bad dizzy when i put a new one in it worked fine the bad dizzy still sparked but not strong enough for combustion and yes you can get a bad dizzy if you dont want to spend the money try just getting a ignitor they can be had for about 50 bucks

 

besides the dizzy, have you taken out the spark plugs to see how the look after the car stalls?

 

I think i got this one.... Sounds to me like a MAIN RELAY under that dash.. .

it shuts off the fuel pump and stuff.... Check it out..

 

HE SAID HE ALREADY REPLACED IT. CHECK YOUR ECU GROUND ON THE THERMOSTAT HOUSING.