I have a '93 Civic LX. It was time to replace the cap and rotor, all four spark plugs and the valve cover gasket.
Prior to this work the car was running rough and would occasionally begin to suddenly loose power at highway speeds.
The tach would drop from 3300 down to about 3000.

Thinking it could be a fuel feed problem I put in a new fuel filter as well. Now the car runs smoothly until 3500 rpm.
That occasional sudden power loss has turned into rapid and repeated power loss which results in the car lurching.
During acceleration, like up a hill, the tach bounces between 3500 and 3000 rpm. I can put my foot to the floor and nothing changes.
It's almost like pushing the accelerator with my right foot, while repeatedly pumping the brakes with left.

I was wondering if a cylinder was misfiring but I don't hear and changes in the exhaust note, and they are all firing smoothly until around that 3000 - 3500 rpm range. Nothing is showing up on the codes other than the speedo error (the speedo died a couple of months ago and I haven't fixed it yet). Could that be part of the problem?

Any ideas?

 

Is yours an auto? I read somewhere about similar problem caused by something wrong in auto tranny...

 

Yes it is an automatic. I have about 200,000 miles on the car. The engine is a used motor with about 70K miles on it. The original blew a head gasket and was pretty well shot.

 

Sorry, I do not have enough understanding on how auto tranny works together with engine, I just saw somewhere similar problem attributed to auto tranny. Hope somebody who knows this better will pick this up.

 

Could be the distributor - maybe the shaft bearings have worn and there is some side-to-side play at the rotor. That would account for temporary non-firing and tach falling. (I am guessing the tach is falling lower than the actual reduction in RPM.) Somewhere I heard that worn distributors were common in Hondas years ago.

You can feel for any play in the shaft. I don't know if there is an allowable amount, but it probably should be imperceptible by hand.

Are you using genuine Honda cap, rotor and wires? Ignition systems seem to be one place where manufacturer knows best.

 

I put a rebuilt distrib. on it last spring/summer so it should have about 6K - 7K miles on it. It was working just fine so I am hoping that it is not the distributor. The plug wires are Honda parts but I do not remember when those were relaced. What's a way to test if it's wires?

 

OK, problem solved. There was a bad crank sensor in the distributor. Thus the timing was getting all messed up at 3400 rpm.
The company that provided the rebuilt distrib. was aquired by a new company and fortunately they honored the warranty and replaced it with a new rebuilt distrib.
Everything runs great now.

Thanks

 

Gongrats!
Thanks for posting this!

 

Hey guys, I have kinda similar problem. There has been a few times when I start the car up in the morning and It is just completely missing.... and the whole engine kinda just shakes.... So I will turn it off and its okay. Then when Im at a light and begin to accel it stumbles. And one last thing if I accelerate around someone on the highway it does it everyonce in a while too. Its just bugging me cause I want to figure out what it is.

note: I replaced spark plugs and wires about 8 months ago and no problems until these past couple weeks. Its a 99 lx, auto, with 86k?

 

did you replace the cap and rotor ??

would like to know if the original poster had a CEL on ???