engine dies while driving… now it wont turn on… smoke seems to come from the throttle body… same thing happened a 2 days ago… left it somewhere over night… came back and it just turned on… drove it home,… and then the next morning went to the gas station… and it died on me… towed it home… then i got it to turn on by adding fuel start spray in the throttle body… and just now… it died again…
symptoms… CAR HOLDS NORMAL IDLE… BUT WHEN I REV IT BACK FIRES… AND THE TACHOMETER JUMPS UP AND DOWN WILDLY WHEN I SLIGHTLY REV… =( doesnt let me rev pass 4000… oh and the hazzards wont work all of the sudden… turn signals do but hazzards dont… stoped working when all this went wrong.
i have NEW SPARK PLUG WIRES… NEW SPARK PLUGS… NEW GAS FILTER… CHANGED DISTRIBUTOR CAP AND ROTOR WITH OEM HONDA ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO…
can it possiby be a fuel issue?.. fuel pump?, any help would mean alot. PELASE HELP!!
i had a similar problem just recently, i had a bad engine wiring harness, so i swap it out with my old one and it fires up perfectly, unless that engine harness IS your original one, you may have other problems.
seeing as how your signal for your tach is pulled from the distributor, and the fact that it seemed to start up after cooling off, i’d definitely suspect the distributor. you should be throwing a code though. have you checked that yet?
I agree with welfare. When your rpm spikes all over the place or drops off suddenly its likely your ignitor inside the distributor. id grab another one and replace yours and likely it will fix your problem.
thank you guys… no i have not checked the code its trowing… i was already trowing a code 43… electrical load detector… but its been like that for months… and yes i am using my stock wiring harness. i found an ignition coil at the junk yard and i put it on my car and it still didnt solve the problem… my firend has an obd2 b16 distributor so i obviously cant use his because its OBD2B so i just took out his ignition coil and put it inside my distributor and it still didnt do the job. this happened last time and it turned on with my same coil and now it died… =( i checked for spark by putting a screwdriver inside the spark plug wire and next to a ground and i get no spark =( so what can this be?
have a quick question… if my car had turned on then doesnt that mean the the distributor is good?.. it turned on i drove to pump gas… then back home… then later that night drove to 711 and thats when it broke down… again. but the whole time i was driving the car was misfiring and the tach was bouncing around when i would step on the gas full trottle or above 3000rpm… any input?
No, just because your car had started and drove horribly this doesn’t mean your distributor is ok.
As for changing ignition coils, Im talking about the ignitor, not the ignition coil (I think otherwise known as the ignition control module.) Anyway, having a spare working distributor on hand is always a good thing so i would suggest you pick one up for $50 and keep it around because its easier than replacing all the parts in the distributor separately. Even if yours isn’t bad now, chances are it will be eventually. When i travel i keep one in the car with me and it solves every damned ignition problem ive ever had. Other than when the alternator dies and takes the battery with it.
I am assuming you have checked your cap and rotor to see that they are both in good shape? A bad rotor contact can make a car misfire and bog. Also, bad wires can cause all sorts of problems…To check these you run the car in a very dark place (like a garage with all the lights off) and have a look at the wires…if you see arching or glowing i certain places they need to be replaced.
but yeah, if you aren’t getting spark we are saying it is most likely the distributor. Change it and see…
Yup, cheap aftermarket Disti’s will let you down everytime. Stay with OEM.
I had one shit the bed in the middle of nowhere last summer. Pulled over, slapped in my spare and was on my way in a few minutes. Would have been a nightmare otherwise.
Welfare I think I remember that, you were somewhere near Nelson BC werent you? Had you stuck for days in a motel or something on a long weekend? Trying to find a distributor for a 20 year old car in the middle of nowhere is not fun.
pick one up from distributor king, search ebay for Flying_pat i believe is his name never had a problem with one of their units i have on in my car now cause the oem one had the shaft bearing go bad.
[QUOTE=Zenmachine;2136874]Yup, cheap aftermarket Disti’s will let you down everytime. Stay with OEM.
I had one shit the bed in the middle of nowhere last summer. Pulled over, slapped in my spare and was on my way in a few minutes. Would have been a nightmare otherwise.
Welfare I think I remember that, you were somewhere near Nelson BC werent you? Had you stuck for days in a motel or something on a long weekend? Trying to find a distributor for a 20 year old car in the middle of nowhere is not fun.[/QUOTE]
haha. yeah. good memory. after spending three days in a motel, waiting for something to open, i ended up hitchhiking into nelson. didn’t get picked up until after the 4.5 hour hike up the steep incline of the summit. in blistering 40* heat! man, nobody wants to stop on that summit. just too high and too steep. notorious for breakdowns.
oh well. i learned a valuable lesson. good times
ok guys… so my car has gone through 2 distributors in the past 6 months… is their maybe a short somewhere in my wiring harness?.. or can it just be a coincidence?.. well none of the distributors were new so maybe it was a coincidence… well i have replaced all the internal parts already… so when a distributor is bad its either the igniter… or the ignition coil?.. can the wiring be burned out?.. i got the igniter and ignition coil checked at auto zone yet the car wont turn on and i have no spark… i guess im just gonna have to buy a new distributor… =(
Do you have your ECU chipped by any chance? Have you had excessive water on your pass foot well?
If your ECU is chipped with a cheap cheap or a hack job that can cause distri problems, or corrosion due to water in the footwell…Something like that. That was ultimately my problem but I would imagine many other things could cause this as well.
Wish I could be of more help man but Im no expert. All I know is every time my car wouldn’t start/had no spark it was the distributor…Maybe that was just me.
As LowNslow mentioned lots of people on here have had good luck with Distributor king as well, if you can’t find a good, used OEM near you.
haha. yeah. good memory. after spending three days in a motel, waiting for something to open, i ended up hitchhiking into nelson. didn’t get picked up until after the 4.5 hour hike up the steep incline of the summit. in blistering 40* heat! man, nobody wants to stop on that summit. just too high and too steep. notorious for breakdowns.
oh well. i learned a valuable lesson. good times
I remember…Cuz I felt real bad that I couldn’t help lol I had just come back from Nelson the week before and knew you were in for a rough time. How did you find one in nelson after…Easily?
naw i have a usdm P72 with a jdm gsr swap. well… THE CAR IS FIXED!!! IT WAS THE DAMN DISTRIBUTOR!!.. i had baught one of this guy on honda tech… brought it home and it didnt work… so automatically i crossed out the distributor as a possibility of why it wasnt turning on… i gave in at the end and just went to buy a new distributor… i got one from autozone simply because it comes with a LIFE TIME WARRANTY… so if this happens again i get a new one free… i know these products are inferior to OEM stuff… but its just temporary till i get a new one from DISTRIBUTOR KING… then i will just have the autozone one in my car as a back up for emergencys or if any one needs to borrow it… lol… thank you so much guys for pointing me in the right direction… i felt i knew a big deal about cars before this… but this experience just makes me realize that if i ever wanna be a GREAT HONDA TECH i have to get my ass in school and get ASE CERTIFIED =) oh and check this page out… it was VERY helpfull as well…
He He, glad you got it fixed man. trust me, the only reason we knew what was wrong was because we have been through the same hell before.
When I first had my problems years back I paid a guy 300 friggan dollars to change my distributor. Then 2 years later I paid another guy $300 to install POS aftermarket one that broke within weeks of install. I swore that day that I would learn about my car so I never got ripped off again…Haven’t looked back since. (Thanks to a lot of research and A LOT of help from this forum.
Cars are kinda like computers…If you own one and want it to go fast, you have to either be rich or know how to fix it yourself.
haha… thats true… hey one more thing… the car works perfect now… the only weird thing that i have notice is that when i take it to the 8000rpm redline the tachometer needle kinda jumps around… but ONLY at the redline!.. weird… anything to worry about guys?..
