Hello All,
My 1998 Civic has about 71K miles on it and believe it or not I was given the car by a friend who left the U.S.. He had rarely driven the car and I have done little to no maintenance to the car except changing the oil and filter.

I have restored European motorcycles and I wrenched around my own American V-8s in high school so I'm fairly handy. (but I've never done any motor work to a Japanese car)

That being said my problems all started when I pulled away from a stop light in traffic. It began to accelerate and then began to jerk rather dramatically, in a very simplistic way, as though it was either starving for fuel or possibly it was not firing intermittently.

Figuring the car might have never had it's fuel filter changed I did that by following a very helpful video that was posted on YouTube.

Here's where the plot thickens, at least to me. In the morning or when it the motor is not warm, it does not give me one bit of trouble. But if I have done an errand or two and I return to the car and start it up it's back to the same old issue of acting like it's not firing during acceleration.

When the problem is occurring it idles at stoplights but it does so very roughly.

I really don't want to drop the money of having a shop beat me out of heaven only knows how much money for a car that I enjoy and drive to work but none the less I consider a beater.

The guy at the shop was nice suggesting that perhaps it could be a main relay in which case he told me the part would be almost $300.-. When I told him that I had an uneducated feeling that it was some kind of sensor, other wise why would the problem only occur when it is warm and not when the car is cold. He want on to tell me most of the sensors are located in the distributor,......And he said a distributor was $700.-!!!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

 

Shouldn't be the main relay, but don't know which sensor you referring to, is your engine light on?

you probably having misfiring issue, check out your spark plug or maybe need to change it out first and see.

 

Thanks for the reply Droopy. I no next to nothing about any of the sensors so I was just referring to a "generic" sensor of some kind,...

The check engine light is on. The entire issue has been going on about three weeks and after about a week the check engine light went off but it came back on and has stayed on.

Yesterday when the problem was occurring I ran the engine up to about 3500 RPM in third gear and I would swear it is misfiring, took be back to high school and thought I might need to change out the coil! (that's what it sounded like.

If it was the plugs, which I can easily change, why would it only occur when the engine is cold?

Again this morning when driving into work, (when the engine is cold) there's not a hint of a problem. I can't make it happen.

When it is happening I notice that it seems to occur more noticeably at low RPMs,...

At this point I'm just concerned that I'm going to have to end up taking it to a shop and have some parts changer begin to switch out $200.- to $500.- parts,....

Thanks in advance.

 

Misfiring at low rpm and heavy throttle typically means you have weak sparks. Change the spark plugs and high voltage wires. Also inspect the distributor cap and rotor for cracks or burns, or just replace them too. Use stock conventional plugs. Ordinary basic platinum plugs may be OK, but those with more than one side electrode should not be used, they don't seem to work right in these engines. For the wires, use OEM ones from a dealer, there are a lot of problems with aftermarket wires. This isn't "parts changer" stuff, those parts do degrade and wear out and are routinely replaced.

 

^^ Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. I can do all that work and I will go ahead and purchase the parts from a dealer.

Even if this isn't the issue knowing the history of the car I believe it's highly likely that this is the first time the plugs, wires and distributor cap have been replaced.