Hi Everyone!

I'm new to the forum, and checked it out becuase I'm having a problem with my 98 Accord V6. It's randomly idling: it runs rough for a second and then the car dies. I have to try to restart it many times and usually have to let it sit for a bit before it'll start again. There's not any consistency as to when it happens. Most often I'm sitting at a stop light, sometimes I'm inching along in traffic or a drive through line. It happens 2-3 times a week. It should not be the idling speed, the Honda dealership has reset that and they are stumped!

Any help is appreciated, thanks a lot!

Stuff like that, you have to be able to catch it in the act, and be prepared to check several things real fast before it decides to start up again.

If this was mine, and it was doing that, here's what I'd do. This is what the shop should be doing also. Assuming there is no codes stored that are relavent to the problem, I'd connect a fuel pressure gauge to the service port on the fuel rail, and tape the gauge to the windshield so I could see it while driving.

I'd also have a loose spark plug or spark tester on me, and maybe a can of starting fluid. I'd have a remote starter switch connected so I could crank it from under the hood.

Then I'd try to duplicate the problem. I'd be watching the fuel pressure leading up to the stalling, and see if there was proper pressure after it died. If it went below spec, I'd know where to start looking.

Assuming the fuel pressure was fine up to and after the stall, I'd connect the spare plug or spark tester to a plug wire and check for spark while cranking it with the remote switch.

After verifying fuel pressure and spark, if nothing was wrong, I'd have to start thinking about other possibilities, the most common would be an excessively lean mixture being created at idle, that causes the stall and subsequent failure to start back up. A few common causes are a sticking Idle Air Control motor, EGR valve sticking, Fuel tank vapor purge solenoid sticking, PCV sticking, etc.

It might get complicated.

Some things you could do yourself to rule them out would be change the PCV valve, get some spray throttle plate cleaner and spray out the throttle plate and bore (while holding the plate open), and run a bottle of good quality fuel injector cleaner through it in the gas, and see if it improves.