TomQuick
04-25-2009, 04:17 AM
Hello all. I recently bought a 1994 Honda Accord LX 2.2L 5 speed manual. The price was right, and it's not a bad little car, but it wasn't well maintained, so there are a lot of issues to deal with up front.
I have plenty of experience turning wrenches, but most of the cars I've owned and worked on over the years have been rear wheel drive, carb'd 8 cyl Chevy's, which leaves me a little in the dark working on FWD FI'd 4 cyl cars.
The engine in the Honda runs strong, and smooth 99% of the time. Occasionally, the idle will drop down pretty low, and the engine will sputter. This only happens at idle, and usually either when I am letting the clutch out (at first, I just thought I was a bit rusty driving stick, and was lugging the engine) or when I've revved the engine a bit, and let off the gas. As the rpm's come back down from the rev, sometimes it will drop down to just a couple hundred RPM's, and stumble for a second or two before recovering to a smooth idle.
If it had a carburetor, I'd have a pretty good idea where to start, but I don't have a clue with this engine.
I"m not sure if this is relevant to my problem, but when I got the car last week, the Check Engine Light was on. I popped the hood, just to have a good look at the engine, and noticed that the wiring for the 02 sensor was unhooked. After I plugged the sensor back in, the Check Engine Light went off. I really didn't drive the car much before I hooked the sensor back up, so I"m not certain if it was having this idle problem before or not.
Additionally, the car has a short ram intake. It's the wrong intake for this car, so the air filter is taking up half the space that the battery is supposed to be in. The filter looks like crap (dirty) and is beaten half to death from smacking into the corner of the battery. I'm waiting for the proper intake, and replacement filter to arrive.
I have plenty of experience turning wrenches, but most of the cars I've owned and worked on over the years have been rear wheel drive, carb'd 8 cyl Chevy's, which leaves me a little in the dark working on FWD FI'd 4 cyl cars.
The engine in the Honda runs strong, and smooth 99% of the time. Occasionally, the idle will drop down pretty low, and the engine will sputter. This only happens at idle, and usually either when I am letting the clutch out (at first, I just thought I was a bit rusty driving stick, and was lugging the engine) or when I've revved the engine a bit, and let off the gas. As the rpm's come back down from the rev, sometimes it will drop down to just a couple hundred RPM's, and stumble for a second or two before recovering to a smooth idle.
If it had a carburetor, I'd have a pretty good idea where to start, but I don't have a clue with this engine.
I"m not sure if this is relevant to my problem, but when I got the car last week, the Check Engine Light was on. I popped the hood, just to have a good look at the engine, and noticed that the wiring for the 02 sensor was unhooked. After I plugged the sensor back in, the Check Engine Light went off. I really didn't drive the car much before I hooked the sensor back up, so I"m not certain if it was having this idle problem before or not.
Additionally, the car has a short ram intake. It's the wrong intake for this car, so the air filter is taking up half the space that the battery is supposed to be in. The filter looks like crap (dirty) and is beaten half to death from smacking into the corner of the battery. I'm waiting for the proper intake, and replacement filter to arrive.