94 Civic DX D15b7

I have been working on getting this taken care of for a few days now. Before the car died, while I was driving, the tach and speedo would stick and jump and my wipers started to slow down, but the engine still ran fine. I parked it and came back a couple of hours later and it started for less than a sec and died. It cranks and cranks but will not start. When I put the key in and turn to I no lights on my dash come on, the chime does not ring, and the fuel pump does not prime. I have a radar detector hard wired and that does not come on at all when it used to. I am thinking the ignition switch but was looking for more opinions.

 

is your battery good? are the terminals good, not corroded or anything? grounds are good?

 

ya all that is good.

 

bump

 

alternator?

 

air, fuel, or spark

 

sounds weird. is it cranking normally or weaker than normal? it sounds like the alt went out and the battery went dead. but you said its cranking fine. if it is cranking ok check for spark first of all.

 

yeah if the cranking seems to get weaker and weaker you might have an alternator problem and are totally killing your battery every time you try to start it... my second guess is gonna be your ignition coil. might have crapped on you. same thing happened to me like 2 weeks ago.

 

sounds like the alternator

in the future if your car dies, you don't really want to sit there and continuously try to start it, what if your timing belt had slipped? eeesh

 

Come on man, it's not like I just sat there and tried to start my car over and over again. I don't think I described the problem right, when I turn it over it like starts and dies at the same time.

 

it sounds like you have an ignition problem to me, or your not getting fuel. did you check for spark yet?

 

I can smell gas so I am assuming that I am getting fuel. I haven't checked for spark yet. Would it still get spark if it is an ignition problem?

 

bump

 

most likely not.

 

like i said, check/replace your ignition coil (it wouldn't hurt to do it anyway) and get your alternator checked out, that's still a possibility.

also, did you check your spark plugs yet? every time you try to turn your car on and crank it you're flooding the combustion chamber with gas and saturating your spark plugs making them even worse then they might already be, which is probably why you're smelling gas as well.

make sure you have good plug wires, 2 of mine went at ~125k miles.

ECU isn't throwing any CEL's?

car has more than just fumes for gas?

grounds are good? check your harness, make sure everything is normal.

and just for the hell of it, check all your fuses and check for vacuum leaks.

i'm not an expert at this type of stuff so if none of this helps at all, i dont really know what to tell you other than "take it to a shop/Honda".

 

If the coil was bad then my dash lights and accessories would come on. I haven't I don't smell gas anymore either. The ECU isn't thorwing any lights, like I said none of my dash lights come on when I turn the key on. It has plenty of gas, my grounds and harness looks good.

 

Well I don't know about much about this but I do know that when I set my fuel pump kill switch the car will crank and then die b/c it empties the fuel thats in the line and then theres nothing left to keep the car running. I would check maybe the fuel pump, do you here it priming when you set the key to the on position? How about the fuel pump relay or fuses have to tried replacing them? Just another few things to try!

 

actually the car had a kill setup like that previously, but the switch and the wiring was really shitty so when the car died I took all the wiring and the switch out, but it didn't help. I can't hear the fuel pump priming, nothing happens when I turn the key to the on position; where usually the pump would prime and all the other dash stuff would turn on.

Where is the fuel pump relay located?

 

I believe the fuel pump relay is under the hood in that fuse panel but I could be way off base, I'm not sure. I'll have to check after church and let you know.