ZMonkey11 said:
As the title says, my car won't start when the engine is warm. It starts fine when the engine is cold, but when warm, no dice. What the dilly yo? It will crank, and if I let it crank 10 times, take the key out, then let it start cranking again, it sometimes start.
I honestly dont know. The last car that did that had a bad crank sensor. What was happening is that as the engine (and the sensor) warmed up, a short occurred inside of the sensor. Since there was no crank sensor signal, there was no spark. At that point, the car either stalled out, or if it was not running at the time, wouldnt start. Once the sensor cooled, the short would close, and the car ran again. This car had a Distributorless Ignition System, but a similar problem could be happening with your car. Do you have a shop manual for your car? If so, run though some of the ignition system tests. Also, one other thing just occurred to me. Do you know anyone else with a Prelude? If so, try swapping distributors. If your ignitor in the distributor is failing, it could definitely cause this problem. This happened to a friend of mine, except his car stalled on the road and wouldnt start back up until we put my distributor on his car. He replaced his ignitor, and it runs fine now. Ill warn you though, they arent cheap, so make sure thats the problem before spending $140 on a new ignitor.