Hey everyone,

I recently purchased a 1996 Honda Civic DX with 192,000 miles, I got it at an excellent price and my 2 door rx7 just wasn't cutting it with the mpg and increasing gas prices. Since owning the car I have cleaned the IACV, replaced the battery, changed the oil, replaced the gas cap, and cleared most of the trouble codes. for the past 2 weeks however I have had one CEL giving me constant problems.

Symtoms:

-CEL light was coming on intermitently until 2 days ago now is constantly on
-A/C does not work when this CEL is on
-Stuck in Limp Mode, can hear the ECU make an audible "click" noise when the CEL comes on.
-Will not rev past ~2500rpms (no tach)
-High idle ~1200
- Will not go faster than 55mph because of rev limiter
-sluggish acceleration
-Brought to Autozone and they were getting a "connection error from the diagnostic unit.

Im starting to think the ECU is fried because I have been reading this forum and have heard of slightly similar problems but with no real way to determine it (from what I have been able to search), which is why I am creating my own post.

Hope someone can help, loving the gas mileage so far.

 

The 96 will also do OBDI style blink codes. Put a test jumper into the 2-wire plug around the top edge of the carpet on the right side of the car, turn key on and don't start, and the CEL should blink out a code. It's rare for ECU to go bad-- before deciding that you should first check that all it's power and ground points are powered and grounded, there is one that powers up the OBDII scanner on the port.