Check Engine Light and TCS

[niranjan]

I had the check engine and TCS lights come on in my car the other day. It was driving fine. I reset it with the clock fuse to see if it came back and it did after a few weeks. This time I went to Autozone and had them pull the codes. P1202 - Fuel Air Metering, P1203 - Fuel Air Metering and P0300 - Random Cylinder Misfire. It only happened after the car was sitting in the garage for a while and the car still drives fine. PLEASE HELP!!

Gin

 

[Larry Bastanza]

The P1202-1203 codes are also misfire, not fuel air metering codes. This tells me that cylinder 2 and 3 are randomly misfiring. Give the car a good washing after it sat?? Maybe some water has entered the rear valve cover and the coils are swimming a little.

If you are mechanically experienced I would pull off the rear coil cover, pull the coils and inspect them.

HTH,
LarryB

 

[niranjan]

I may have given the car a wash after it sat for a while. Not really sure, but it's possible. Still, it has been a few weeks since the first check engine light came on. Would there still be water in there?

I'm not mechanically experienced, but I am mechanically inclined if it's not too difficult a job.

 

[Larry Bastanza]

Sure it could be. Once you get the coils out it may tell the story.

If you want to go throught the procedure I can get tyou to the right page in the manuals on-line and we can discuss.

HTH,
LarryB

 

[niranjan]

PM sent.

 

[TyraNSX]

Car is hesitating/shuddering at low revs. P1202 (cyl 2 misfire) & P1399 (can't find definition) codes. TCS light lit, CEL blinking. Car has been sitting in garage past 2-3 months on battery tender. Totally stock, ~1/2 tank gas with Shell V Power cleaner added a few months back. Prior to 2-3months ago last driven 2-3 months before that.This makes no sense since it has been sitting. No obvious mouse nests, etc. in engine bay.

Any ideas?

Will pull of coil covers once it cools off, but they have not been a problem since last off 4 yrs ago for timing belt. Car drives fine above & below the revs where the hesitation occurs (~3-4K)

 

[pgilliam1]

Car is hesitating/shuddering at low revs. P1202 (cyl 2 misfire) & P1399 (can't find definition) codes. TCS light lit, CEL blinking. Car has been sitting in garage past 2-3 months on battery tender. Totally stock, ~1/2 tank gas with Shell V Power cleaner added a few months back. Prior to 2-3months ago last driven 2-3 months before that.This makes no sense since it has been sitting. No obvious mouse nests, etc. in engine bay.

Any ideas?

Will pull of coil covers once it cools off, but they have not been a problem since last off 4 yrs ago for timing belt. Car drives fine above & below the revs where the hesitation occurs (~3-4K)

Sounds almost like a weak fuel pump resistor. Revs OK above 4K, maybe strap out the resistor (easy test) and see if that helps.
Good luck!

 

[TyraNSX]

Update: Car throws CEL blinking & TCS constant under acceleration. Happens within seconds to first few minutes of going for a drive. Revs fine in neutral and in lower gears. When higher gear & lower revs or going from a stop the car stutters & throws lights.

Coil packs look fine. Plugs for 2 & 4 look similar. Swapped coils for 2 & 4 (front bank left most moved to center & vice versa) & still get P1202 &
P1399. So I'm stumped. Could it be an injector for #2 if it's not the coil?

At this point with Steve Gooding no longer available I'm thinking about taking it to the local Acura dealer. Not my first choice. Open for suggestions & what to do next.

 

[pgilliam1]

Sounds like your ignitor. The ignitor can cause misfire codes, car can seem OK when cruising, intermittant probs., engine starts running on 4 or 5 cylinders. Part Number: 30120-PR7-A01 (for 1991-1994).
Good Luck!

 

[TyraNSX]

Update:

Last Sun aftrn I put a bottle of Iso-Heet in the tank. Continued to throw codes & hesitate. Sun. evening I swapped plugs on cyl 2 & 4 (cyl 2 plug had a film of rust dust on the upper porcelain, no signs of water anywhere). After that it has run fine & no CELs.

I have 3 possible explanations:
1) Evil spirits that came to live in car while sitting finally moved on.
2) Magic spark plug has problem in one cylinder but not another.
3) Water/ethanol had separated out while sitting for so long and it took a while for the iso-heet to mix in & do its thing.

I will be getting a couple bottles of Sta-Bil Ethanol Treatment, Sta-bil regular, & Iso-Heet to keep on hand from now on.

 

[pgilliam1]

Leads me to believe you had condensation in the #2 coil pack (hence the rust). Plugs rarely cause intermittant problems.
Good Luck!

 

[TyraNSX]

Like I said above, there were zero visual problems with the coils or plugs, including moisture. And moving the coils did not move the misfire.

 

[ftuhy]

I've experienced rust in the contact & spring on the high voltage contact of the coil pack for cylinder 5. I never got to the point of it throwing a code, but it caused radio interference. CD & tape were quiet, so it was radiated emissions, not conducted emissions through the 12V and ground leads.

In my case, there were never any traces of water, all was bone dry, not even a trace mark in the dust. Yet I installed new plugs, cleaned the HV contact on the coil pack, used silicon grease on the pack seal & boot, and 2,000 miles later had the same problem.

So, my question is - did you have FM radio interference?

 

[TyraNSX]

Frank,

There is mild radio static. Car was ok for a week, not driven for a week. Took it out today & it was ok for ~8mi then started hesitating, TCS light on, blinking CEL. Stopped at Autozone & of course, P1202 & P1399 again. Does anyone have a connection with a good Acura tech to get the definition of P1399? 1202 is cyl 2 misfire.

Once it cools off I am going to clean all the plugs, coat them with dielectric grease where they connect to the coils, & see what happens.

 

[ftuhy]

P1399 is not listed as either a generic code or an Acura code in my 1995/96 Shop Manual. But I found the following on one web site: Code P1399 is specific to Honda - it is an error code for "multiple variable misfires detected".

I did a quick search and other Honda/Acura products have tossed this same code. All I see are WAGs on various web pages - bad EGR, bad plugs, bad coil packs, bad injectors. One person claims that new plugs fixed the problem.

Being that you have radio noise, I would do what Larry B said - pull every coil pack & look at the rubber boot for the spark plug, plus take a flashlight and look up into the boot. The contact should be silver-colored, not rusty. If rusty, clean it with an ink pen eraser. Lightly clean the top of each plug with emery cloth to remove any oxidation from sparking.

Try dielectric grease around the base of the ceramic body of each plug for a better seal to the boot. One of Larry's tests is push a spark blug into the coil pack boot, then turn it with the plug facing down. If the plug falls out, the boot has gone bad and you are most likely getting sparking around the boot. That would mean time for a new coil pack. (RockAuto had one Airtex/Wells coil pack - which is made by whoever made them for Acura - on a wholesalers clearance sale for $40 last week. I bought one earlier out of curiousity. By the time I compared it to the original & tried it in my engine, they had sold out all but one. Its a steal at that price.)

I don't know if all this helped, but good luck with this ugly problem.

 

[nsxter]

I had an intermittent missfire, Always on cylinder 3, Finally it was determined to be a bad/clogged injector

 

[TyraNSX]

Kind of in a dilemma now. Do I spend $200 on a coil on plug spark tester & a fuel injector quick probe or just take it in to the dealer?

Cleaned all the plugs, dielectric grease on top, still getting P1202 & P1399. At this point I am really wondering if it's an injector since moving the coils didn't move the misfire. May try adapting stethoscope to see if I can hear injectors opening. I really don't think it's spark but no way to tell without appropriate tools

 

[pgilliam1]

Moving the injectors is not very difficult. You don't have to remove the fuel lines to do it. The fuel rails lift enough to remove them. If you have over 60K miles and don't use a good injector cleaner (Techron works well) annually then sending the injectors to RC Engineering will help both starting and performance. RC balances their flows and provides documentation on their condition before and after reconditioning them.

 

[TyraNSX]

According to the manual you need to take the rails out to get the injectors out. If you can get them out without, can you get them back IN that way or do you need to take the rails out to reinstall? More importantly, do you absolutely have to replace all the o-rings & seals on the injectors (I know the manual says to)? I already researched RC Engineering's website yesterday. Thanks for the advice.

Moving the injectors is not very difficult. You don't have to remove the fuel lines to do it. The fuel rails lift enough to remove them. If you have over 60K miles and don't use a good injector cleaner (Techron works well) annually then sending the injectors to RC Engineering will help both starting and performance. RC balances their flows and provides documentation on their condition before and after reconditioning them.

 

[nsxter]

Well this is what I did, Since I did not have a proper stethoscope handy to listen for the clicking, I used a 2' piece of old vacuum hose with a long screw in one end, then placed the end of the screw on the injector and listened to the other end of the hose, no clicking, I checked all the other injectors that way and were clicking away. At the suggestions of an experienced NSX tech I then I took a long handled screwdriver, placed it on the injector, and genlty tapped on the end of the screwdriver with a hammer and that tapping freed the sticking injector. Done...after that all was working and no codes. I then ran a bottle of techron fuel system cleaner thru on the next tank of gas, no problems since....

 

[pgilliam1]

According to the manual you need to take the rails out to get the injectors out. If you can get them out without, can you get them back IN that way or do you need to take the rails out to reinstall? More importantly, do you absolutely have to replace all the o-rings & seals on the injectors (I know the manual says to)? I already researched RC Engineering's website yesterday. Thanks for the advice.

The rails have to be lifted up, but you can do that with the fuel lines still attached. The fuel lines attach to the rail with compression fittings and they can be very hard to remove (similiar to the fuel filter connections). The rails are bolted onto the manifold and are easy to unbolt and lift off the injectors. After the rails are lifted the injectors just simply pull out and push back in - very easily done. The O-rings need to be replaced. I have read posts here that leaky injector O-rings have caused catastrophic engine fires. The O-rings flatten out with time as you'll see if you remove the injectors. If you remove the fuel rails, be sure to let the engine sit for a couple of hours before you do so the pressure in the fuel lines bleeds down (gas will spew everywhere if pressure is not allowed to drop - the pressure drops on it's own). There may be some gas leakage when you lift the fuel rail off the injectors, so don't smoke and have a rag ready to wipe up excess.
Good Luck!

 

[TyraNSX]

Tried the homemade stethoscope. Could hear all the front bank injectors clicking (sounds like a little woodpecker on a tin roof). Went for drive, ~4mi out got hesitation and codes again. Checked cyl 2, could hear injector clicking. Cleared codes, it kept coming back. So I'm stumped. Ignitor maybe or coil? Unlikely it's coil since moving coil didn't move misfire. Will try swapping coils again just to be safe.

Torn between maybe wasting money on an ignitor which might not even be the problem or going to dealer. An igniter is $243!!! Holy Crap!!!!

 

[pgilliam1]

Are you still on that same tank of gas??? It seemed to get better when you put the additive in. Maybe just bad gas??? Seems to me if it was bad gas the misfire code would be more random as to what cylinder was reported by the ECU. Hmmmmmmmm?

 

[TyraNSX]

I put 1.5 gal of Shell 93 in tonight since it was getting low. Still did it.

 

[pgilliam1]

The injector still could be randomly misfiring. Most of the episodes I've read about where ignitors go out involve more than 1 cylinder and it's more randomly spread amoung them (doesn't mean it can't be though). If your misfire code is consistantly cylinder #2, I would concentrate my efforts on that cylinder. Move the spark plug, coil pack and injector (run the engine after each swap and check then reset the ECU codes) from #2 to #1 and see if the code changes. Also check the connection to the injector for looseness, cracks or bad/burnt insulation.
Good Luck - I hate to see anyone have to be subjected to dealership tactics.