Well...had a long weekend, again

Started out Saturday morning with me changing the oil and finishing up the installation of the ES motor mount inserts(rear was installed just needed to install the 2 fronts), needed to be home at 6:30pm as people were coming over to decorate for party at 9pm.

Installation of the ES mounts was pretty easy, very straightforward, just wasn't completely awake, so it took longer than it should....changed oil, went to fill the oil up and grabbed a 5qt thing of Mobil 1, knew that it wasn't at 5qts so I just filled it up since it was about 4 1/4 quarts...start car, let it idle for a couple of minutes, turn car off and let it sit for 5 minutes, check the oil and I'm a quart low thought that I had filled it up , add in additional quart, grab extra ecu and Chris's jackstands and head over to Chris's house, had to be quick because I was expecting

6 miles from my house car dies on the highway, cruising at 80mph...cruise to the side of the freeway, car cranks, but doesn't start. Check hondata box and find that the hondata isn't getting power, disconnect ecu, change the hondata cable with extra that I just happened to have in the car, still doens't work...removed the hondata and reinstalled the stock ecu, still doesn't work. Call Chris, he's now on his way...find that the fuel pump isn't priming, check fuel pump fuses, they're still good, check the PGM-FI fuse...blown, we keep the stock ecu in and change out the fuse, car starts on the first try we hop back in our cars and a mile down the highway the car dies again sure enough pfuse blew again, sounds like we have a short somewhere, replace fuse and it blows instantly

Call my father to have him come down to use his AAA platinum membership to get car towed to Chris's house, call friend to pick me up so that I can get home in time for the party at my house...tow truck driver was very cool, and took quite a few precautions to make sure that nothing was injured in the tow, he also knew a lot about honda and acura's...even made mention to the frame stiffening of the Type-R .

Friend picks me up from Chris's house, arrive home at 8pm, finish decorating and start drinking , 3 beers, 2 smirnoff ice's, 6 shots of some sort of concoction that 2 cute girls were making, 2 big rum and cokes...went to bed at 4:30 am(corrected time of 3:30am).

Chris picks me up in the morning to go find out what is wrong with the car...start working at 10am and I have a hangover to go with my allergies, we have a short from the fuse box, trace wire to the PGM-FI relay, find that the short is after the relay, so....check all the wires for short using Chris's car as a known good car, find that it's the YLW/BLK wire that has 3 wire running to the ecu(IGP1, IGP2, and fuel pump), and 1 wire to the immobalizer circuitry...can't find which wire is shorting since they're all connected. Check the wiring diagrams in the Helms...they're only 4 wire that 4 places that are noted that the YLW/BLK goes to. It's 4pm and I'm really frustrated, can't figure it out and I'm hung-over, Chris has been in and out running errands and going to the pumpkin patch with his family...it's decided that we're going to start cutting wires and re-running them to find which one is shorting...second wire cut the short goes away from all the wire except the wire that was cut, odd that there were 2 wires coming out of one pin location...hmmmm, car still wont start, well I guess that wherever that 2nd wire went it obviously did something important.

I pull out the wiring schematic from the back of the helms, previously using the fuse circuit diagram...what do you know the 2nd wire does do something important, it is connected to the injectors, IAC valve, primary O2 sensor heater, and to the ECU...<u>all of which are not noted in the fuse schematic in the Helms</u>. Check the injectors and they're not shorted, check the IAC valve and it has a short...next is to jack up the car and check the primary O2 sensor...guess what I found, the ******* short...primary O2 sensor leads had too much slack, and after I changed the oil I moved the leads around and gave them enough room to swing around, eventually touching the header and melting part of the plug, thus shorting the O2 heater circuit and blowing the PGM-FI fuse.

This was something that could have taken me 10 minutes to troubleshoot, yet took over 10 hours because the helms manual does not list the wire on it's fuse circuit diagram , eventually found only because I noticed that there were too many wires coming out of a plug...went to the schematic and found that the circuit had more connections that the Helms mentioned.

There is more...car is back together, leave to go home and the passenger's side window wont roll up...****, just what I need, another problem, drive the 20 minutes home, park the car in the garage so that I can drain out the extra quart of oil, that taken care of I start pulling all of the window fuses, everything checks out, driver's window rolls up and down without a problem...at this time I just want to get some food and go to sleep, then I realize that the off switch on the driver's door for the passenger's window was turned to the off position, turn it back on and the window rolls right up.

Damn it was a long weekend, and I feel like absolute crap...Thank you again Chris for all of your help, I couldn't have figured it out without you there.

So what I learned is that if the primary O2 sensor heater circuit shorts out your car dies, if the seconrary heater circuit shorts out you speedometer works sparadocially, battery light doesn't work any more.

The Helms does not show where every wire runs in their normal diagrams, you must look at the full schematic to find where all the wire really go.

Austin - who wishes that he could be at home sleeping, and must really stop these long posts.

 

dang dood.. rough weekend... i had trouble like that with my brothers rx-7.. man i know how you feel that **** must be a BIZZZNATCH... i had a a similar problem.. car wouldnt crank so went thru every troubleshoot thing in the book..NOTHING found out it was the clutch relay switch.. (press down on the clutch to make it start) due to that the car wont start! its alrite dude.. everyone has their days

 

Wow!!! get some sleep!

 

Oh...and on top of it all I ended up missing the Honda-Tech meet in Sacramento because of this

Austin

 

Hehe Austin same thing happened to me, 2ndary o2 ground out on body. Luckily, I was in a better location to diagnose it and I was able to get running in a half hour or so. But it was the last thing I expected!

 

Ahahaha!!!! I hate it when that happens, didn't you feel stupid after? I've been in this situation before and it was one of those moments where one thing after another was breaking on my car so when i couldn't get my window up, that just sparked everything off and i was gonna get rid of my car, then i realized that there was a switch to turn off the passenger side window...

 

It was just the icing on the cake for my day...I was tired of everything, and was ready to just say screw it...but then I drove the car the next morning , then I remembered why I bought the car

 

Murphy's Law...sucks that it works so well.

Last motor swap that we did...was on a ground up rebuild...full race everything. Fuel cell, full cage, no interior...a track only car. After spending 6 hours putting the motor in...we go to start it to find that it won't start...start checking wires...ecu is fine, distributor is fine...start tearing everything down wondering what is wrong....we forgot to put gas in it.....

JN who felt real stupid after that incident.