Alright here’s what I’ve done: I just bought a 1990 teg 5speed for $400. I bought the car because I blew the engine on mine, not sure exactly how I had oil and everything I’m guessing my engine just had enough and wanted to call it quits. No biggie either way. I bought the car from a guy and everything he told me about the car was pretty straight forward he told me the car had been just sitting for about 6 months maybe more so I already had an idea what I was in for. I tow the car back to my house with a truck and a rope, I do notice the breaks really don’t work that well but with a strong foot I got the car to my place safely and without any major problems. Now, the guy had told me the distributer is bad and also a relay inside the car so that’s where I started. I swaped distributers and the relay he told me about and of course put in my own battery. Car didn’t do anything, I had thought it was to easy to be just those 2 things. Look more into the issue and my friend notice’s that the starter signal connection was broke off the starter, so I swap starters. Then I try cranking it and it worked, well sort of. That’s all it would do is crank. So, I check the next best thing spark. After swaping distributers I was now getting spark. So, next I check the fuel delivery. Open up the nut on the fuel filter and believe it or not, there’s no fuel coming out of it even when trying to crank it. So, I decide to change out fuel pumps after droping the tank on the 90 DA teg I figure I might as well swap out the whole fuel tank. So I do so and am now getting fuel to the filter and fuel rail. Crank the car and still nothing… So, being fed up with the small stuff and dredding going threw the entire wire harness and as it being obd0 I don’t know some of the components of it I figure I might as well take the whole wire harness out of the 93 DA and put it in the 90. So, I do that and after messing with the harness to work without the auto tranny I get the engine to crank once again. So, to sum it all up:
Changed the fuel, changed the distributer, swapped harneses.
I really need some outside input on this one. Anyone have any ideas let me know, thanks.
“have you checked the MFR relay its a very common problem.”
Yeah I swapped it out with mine also, pretty much every thing that was connected on my 93 teg’s wire harness was switched over. I didn’t really specify on the wire harness I changed so, I changed the main wire harness the one inside the car that connects the fuse box and the ECU and other stuff. Also, the engine wire harness.
Too bad you dont have a Fuel Pressure gauge to make sure you are getting proper pressure. I’d carefully check and gap plugs (also check plugs for carbon buildup, graying ect) use known working wires, and make sure the spark you are getting is a good solid one. (A weak one may not be enough to start) If fuel and spark are good then maybe disconnect the air intake from the throttle body for a sec to make sure nothing on that is blocked or whatever. Check timing too?
The thing should at least begin to catch at that point. Any chance you have done a leakdown test to make sure you dont have a nasty leak anywhere internally?
The spark plugs I swapped from my car and along with the wires I checked the spark in the plugs to the cars ground seemed like a good enough ground. However, thinking of the ground I think I’m going to check on those and see if I could just change the location of them.
Thanks for all the ideas and please keep them coming. I’ll post up my progress as it happens.
Changing the grounds made a difference it actually sounds like it wants to start now. However, my battery is dead and is now on the charger so I’m going to put the car back together some and let it charge. We’ll see how that goes when it has a charge.
So the grounds made a huge difference but the problem is still happening. Its getting some kind of ignition but its not keeping it and when I stop trying to start it, it doesn’t do anything. Please anyone with anymore ideas please let me know. Your help is appreciated. Thanks.
like Zen said the next thing since you know you have air, fuel and spark, is to do a compression AND leak down test to make sure the valves are seating properly and arent bent and just plain how much compression is getting.
also check physical AND spark timing to make they are right on. if physical timing isn’t dead on it can act just like you are saying…fires some but doesn’t actually start…spark timing being off can cause some troubles as well with trying to start.
i don’t think you can just swap the engine harness and distributor from obd1 and retain the obd0 pcm. in fact, i’m almost positive that that’s where your problem lies. on obd1 models, honda decided to switch two of the wires on the 7 pin connector at the distributor. i believe one was for the ignitor. fat white and little white, or something like that. look into it. you’ll probably either need to re-pin the connectors or switch back to obd0 harness and distributor.
or, you can convert completely to obd1. you’d then need to use a 4 wire o2 sensor (your current harness should be equipped with the connector) and plug in an obd1 pcm.
First of all are you sure your wiring conversion is 100% correct. Do you have a 4 wire 02 sensor, obd1 injectors, delete your resistor box, obd1 distributor, etc. I think you have created more problems than when you started by doing this wiring swap. However since it still will not start have you checked for ecu codes or vacuum leaks. As previous posters have said check ignition timing and then do a compression and leak down test. If all those check out it could possibly be an injector problem.
Well my friend and I were able to finally figure out what was wrong. The valve lash was off in every cylinder and after correcting it I now have compression in 2 cylinders (1 and 2). I still have very little compression in cylinders 3 and 4 so were going to change out my piston rings which should fix it. Either way, everyone thanks for your help and all your ideas. I’ll keep posting amd let you all know my progress.
Glad you figured it out. Seems like the lesson here is, on an unknown engine do your compression/leakdown testing first and save yourself a whoooooole lotta trouble. Well, at least the car is OBD 1 now
Yeah true. Compression test would have been a good thing to do first. Then I would have ran into the trouble with the fuel pump and maybe the wiring. I’m glad I did swap over to obd 1 though it’ll be worth it in the long run.
I made that mistake once. :S