Help with Check Engine Light? - Page 3 - Honda Prelude Forum

checkmate58 · 10-21-2008, 10:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason01LUDE

i think its your NGK Iridium plugs. i have never had luck with the Iridium plugs. try the Regular NGK i bet the missfire will go away

I agree with you on the Iridiums. I bought like 2 sets and within 2 weeks, I started getting misfire codes. Ever since then, I used just the regular NGK Coppers. No more misfire.

--Sam

itzroyal · 10-23-2008, 07:53 AM

I was told the EGR might need to be replaced... any other solutions?

pIERCE · 10-24-2008, 12:29 AM

Wow, thats funny, you said you already took care of that...

Go to an auto parts store and get the egr valve gasket that you have to replace every time you remove the valve, then take the valve itself off, and before wasting all the time and materials to clean it, if the action of the plunger is nice and smooth and goes in and out all the way(use your judgement), then it is doubtfully not your valve itself. Check the vacuum hose going to it(might want to do that first). Then if the valve is good, do the egr port cleaning. If the valve is bad, then replace it(~$150 as I already said).

I would suggest you do the egr port cleaning if your car has over 100k miles, because that is often the culprit. It doesn't neccesarily make your car run better, but it does help somewhat.

Good luck

itzroyal · 10-24-2008, 01:41 PM

Thanks pierce. Will look into that this weekend or so.

prepreludesh · 10-24-2008, 03:22 PM

I'm not going to pretend I'm a subject matter expert but here's a problem I had... When we put my engine all back together, I kept getting a cylinder position sensor CEL or a ignition CEL on my motor. It turns out that what it needed wasn't any of the sensors to be replaced, but instead, it was all in the distributor. Let me explain what I can:

The entire distributor was taken off of my old head (the one with 225,000 miles) and put on the brand new head. It's kind of a precise science to how it's lined up on the end of the exhaust cam I guess and any little bit it's off, will throw a sensor. Honda's don't really have an adjustable distributor they claim, but if you see where the three bolts are holding it in, there is a little bit of clearance to adjust it left or right. The guy who was tuning my car loosened the bolts ever so slightly and turned the engine on. The distributor didn't move anywhere, but he took a 1/2 drive wrench and tapped lightly to make it go forward and backwards at small incriments. I was on the inside clearing the CEL each time it came on but when we found it was not coming on anymore, we knew we had found the "sweet spot." At that point, he tightened down the bolts extra good and we were off to tune the rest of the car.

That's just my little story, maybe try it out if you can, you'll have to have a helper with you, but I almost cringed when I saw the amount you paid for a new distributor if the old one had been okay the whole time and this was your problem.

As much as I've trusted Honda Mechanics in the past and still today, there is still that small chance of error that they're going to have where they get stumped and start taking chances. I bet they replaced that distributor, didn't get a CEL anymore and patted themselves on the back, but I am only speculating.

I would recommend getting a new head with all new components (or used head that is known to work) and just swapping the whole thing. If you get no more CELs, then you're set and you know the problem still exists in your old head. I bought a head recently for $350 (minus distributor) and it cleared up all of the gremlins in my previous motor.

At this point you have nothing left to loose but a whole lot more to spend

pIERCE · 10-24-2008, 03:25 PM

The egr vlave check shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes, and if you do the port cleaning, maybe 2-4 hours, depends on how you do it. If you do decide to clean the ports , search for some threads, they usually have good info. I have an old thread on hete that goes on for days about it.

Good luck